Showing a race to someone
The URL you copy at the end of a race is not a note of who won. It is the race.
The race is inside the link
What you send is neither a picture nor a video. Open the link and the same river runs from the beginning on their screen, ending in the same order. It does that every time it is opened.
Useful when someone who was not in the room wants to see that the order really was that. Being told a result and watching one from the start are not the same kind of agreement.
Sending one
Four buttons at the end. “Copy URL” is the link alone. “Copy result and URL” adds the ranking as text, so pasting it says everything. LINE and X hand it to those apps.
The text is short — the names in order, first to last. For anyone who will not open a link, that alone carries the result, and for a quick message it is probably all you need.
What they see
The same run, from the same beginning. The speed control and the skip are there for them too, so anyone who only wants the ranking can press skip and have it.
Opening the link yourself before sending it is the sure way to know what arrives. The names show exactly as typed — which is also the moment to decide whether they should have been nicknames.
Why the link is long
The whole race is in there, so the URL grows with the number of players and the length of their names. Ten names is ten names’ worth of URL.
Run it through a shortener if you like — the race on the far side is the same. The shortener will have a record of the URL, which we do not.
The names in it are readable
The names inside a link are encoded, not encrypted. Anyone who knows the format can read them. If a name is not for showing around, do not hand that link out.
Share links are also kept out of search results. There are as many of them as people care to make, and with names inside them they have no business being crawled.
No expiry
Bookmark a link and the race is there whenever you want it, from the beginning. Nothing is lodged on a server waiting to be looked up, so nothing can decide to expire it.
By the same token, lose the link and that race is gone for good. If a result matters, keep the URL.
Old links still open
Links handed out before a feature existed keep working. Starting a leaf upstream came after the first release, and links made before it run exactly as they did.