When you want to utilize every bit of that 140-character Tweet limit to communicate your latest find or endeavor, every character matters. So I thought I’d compile a character count of most URL shortening services out there and give you a round, hard number of just how short did the developer mean when he said “short”?
Feel like I’m missing something, or have a service to add to the list? Leave a comment, Tweet, or Email me.
The list will be ordered in ascending order, from the lowest to highest count, and will be presented in this format:
(Service name)
(Snarky commentary, whenever appropriate)
(Shortened URL format)
(Character Count)
Here we go.
tr.im
The Serious Contender
http://tr.im/XX
15
(Admittedly, not going to stay this way for very long)
is.gd
The Tried-And-True
http://is.gd/XXXX
17
http://s7y.us/XXX
17
http://hurl.ws/XXX
18
http://jmp2.net/XX
18
http://2big.at/XXX
18
twurl
The Fine Local Product
http://twurl.cc/XXX
19
http://xrl.us/XXXXX
19
http://tiny.pl/XXXX
19
The Make-Up-Your-Own-Keyword
bit.ly
http://bit.ly/XXXXXX
20
http://poprl.com/XXX
20
http://qurlyq.com/XX
20
http://piurl.com/XXX
20
http://tnij.org/XXXX
20
http://fon.gs/XXXXXX
20
http://bloat.me/XXXX
20
http://abbrr.com/XXXX
21
http://knol.me/XXXXXX
21
http://snurl.com/XXXXX
22
The Twitter-Tracker Tweetburner
http://twurl.nl/XXXXXX
22
http://moourl.com/XXXXX
23
http://rubyurl.com/XXXX
23
http://urlenco.de/XXXXX
23
TinyURL
The Granddaddy
http://tinyurl.com/XXXXXX
25
http://dwarfurl.com/XXXXXX
26
September 17, 2008 at 11:54 pm
Wow Bram, I had no idea that there were this many services available…here is another one http://shmyl.com/zttoson I’ve heard of and seen a few of these but most of them are new.
Twurl.cc is by far my favorite…openID, tracking, PDX, many reasons.
September 18, 2008 at 12:02 am
[...] A Character Length Comparison Of Various URL Shortening Services « Link En Fuego Bram Pitoyo writes “When you want to utilize every bit of that 140-character Tweet limit to communicate your latest find or endeavor, every character matters. So I thought I’d compile a character count of most URL shortening services out there and give you a round, hard number of just how short did the developer mean when he said ’short’?” [...]
September 18, 2008 at 7:45 am
Great effort and cool idea, Bram!
So, isn’t the basic premise of all these services that they use the least characters possible based on what URLs they have created previously? So that would doom every service to constantly get longer and longer, and might cause more and more services to keep springing up with new short domains.
As you’ve shown, there’s many more services than I knew about. Seems like that’s the way it’ll be for now.
September 18, 2008 at 11:29 am
James,
Thanks for the http://shmyl.com/ link! I agree with you, I use http://twurl.cc/ the most because it’s a local product, and it’s the only provider who offers link tracking with OpenID (compare this with http://bit.ly/ who tracks URL, but only limit it to 15 last entries.)
September 18, 2008 at 11:40 am
Mason,
There seems to be two ways in which these shortening services generate their URL’s.
- Progressive, that services like tr.im and twurl.cc uses. Progressive means that the number always go up, but always in a certain order. I.e.:
twurl.cc/aa
twurl.cc/ab
twurl.cc/ac
etc.
However, if you plug in the same URL again in the future, it will generate a new shortened URL. Therefore: not the most efficient.
- Randomized permalink, that services like TinyURL and bit.ly use by default. Plug in two separate URLs, and you’ll get two totally different shortened URLs that aren’t in order. Usually, the result would be between 5 to 6 characters. However, plug in the same URL again in the future, and you’ll get the same shortened URL. This is why I call this method “permalink.”
And you’re right. Services will get longer and longer with more shortened contents. Good to know that we can use the ones that are less well known but have smaller character-count first, before jumping to the obvious.
December 30, 2008 at 2:31 pm
This is great, I am excited.
http://yiyd.com
Short Url Service
October 7, 2009 at 7:13 am
And yet another new one – http://ho.io/ with the added benefit that it’s new, so even one character extensions (e.g. http://ho.io/X) are available, although admittedly not for very long.