I\'ve read a great deal of discussion recently (both on this site and elsewhere) about \"friendly URLs\" but I\'m not sure what exactly makes a URL \"friendly\" and why we r
First off, they're friendly to search engine crawlers. Google and others put a high value on words in the url that match words on the page, so if the title of your blog post is in the URL, it will help your search engine juice.
Secondly, they're friendly to people who don't know what they're visiting. Which of the links that you used for comparison are you more likely to click on if it comes across your twitter/email/IM/etc?