New Kind of Service Solves Problem as Old as the Web Itself
Oslo, Norway -- September 21, 2009 -- A problem on the Internet today is dead
links or link rot. Studies have shown that 1 of 200 links disappear every week
from the Web and 50% are gone after 10 years, large web sites like Wikipedia
report that 10% of their external links are broken in some manner.
Svonk.com is a new kind of service that prevents dead links and link rot by
acting as an intermediate storage for links; by typing svonk.com/ in front of a
link it is archived at svonk.com and will always be available in its original
form, even though the original link has changed or does not exist anymore. Also,
Svonk includes a URL Shortener service, svk.bz, that has the added advantage
over conventional URL Shortener services of archiving the shortened links.
Svonk is useful for everyone that publishes on the Web, whether on their blog or
their content management system; Svonk ensures that external links will always
be available as intended by the publisher. Svonk archives any kind of web
resource; web pages, images, videos, and sounds etc. are stored. Users can
browse the svonk.com archive and use the built-in time-machine to see archived
links change over time. Developers can access most svonk.com features by using
the Svonk RESTful API.
"Svonk is the first service of its kind, we call it a Stable Link Service; no
other web service allows for archiving of links on demand in such an easy
manner. We hope that everyone that publishes links on the Internet, on their
blog, Twitter, on their web site, etc., will find the Svonk services useful.
Also, we hope that Web site owners will find the Svonk web site archiving
services useful as a permanent backup when changing content management system;
by using Svonk they are sure that their old links are still available after
their CMS upgrade or migration. In addition, developers should have no problem
getting started using the svonk.com features with its RESTful API", says founder
Inge Henriksen.
Most Svonk features are free to use, removing advertisements and archiving
entire web sites are paid services, and otherwise Svonk uses web advertising as
a source of revenue. Svonk is currently in an open beta stage. The beta period
will be used to fine-tune Svonk to the needs of its users in terms of usability
and scalability.
Svonk is owned by Meronymy; the company was founded by Inge Henriksen in 2005
and is based out of Oslo, Norway.
