Google and Facebook have muscled their way into the Short URL game.  Bit.ly, responds with offering its pro members the ability to create their own, custom short URLs.  At a time when we might see folks trying to secure, and buy up the "beach front property" of  the much more limited permutations of the short URLs, it would seem that the domain name will backbone of a new species of links - the ones that can thrive in a Twitter ecology.

Is the traditional domain name going to be left in the shadows. Will they be preserved in museums as towering strings of characters to the more nimble tiny, but super-smart tiny URL? Will saavy namers secure some small names to sell to the highest bidder? Will it be stolen from them?

This the next iteration of the rise and fall of another Web civilization. Hmmm....