Url shortening is a technique in the web when a web page is made available by a provider under an extremely short url in addition to the address it had originally. There are many reasons to use url shortening. One reason is to avoid lengthy, hard to remember url’s for easy remembering. Copying an extremely long url is time consuming and can cause the url to become ‘garbled.’ A short email is easier to copy on an email, website or social network site. On Twitter especially, which allows only up to 140 characters, a url which is longer than that will just be impossible to paste. Url shortening will be essential and necessary for you to be able to share the webpage it has. For reading aloud purposes, such as during a conference or a seminar, a long url will be exhausting to read, much less to write down, from the listeners’ point of view.
Each long url is associated with its own key which is the portion after http://domain.tld/. There are many different techniques to creating a shortened url. Keys can be numerically generated in base thirty-six assuming twenty six letters and ten numbers. A random number can be generated in order for the key sequence not to be predictable. Users can even suggest their own keys.
The first noted url shortening services was called TinyURL and was launched in 2002. The idea, however, has been around since the year 2001 at least. The existence of Tiny URL influenced about one hundred other similar websites. Many were simply domain alternatives. Some offered additional features such as NotifyURL which sends an email when the link is first visited. SnipURL introduces social bookmarking features such as usernames as well as RSS feeds. DwarfURL generates statistics. Adjix, XR and Linkbee are ad-supported models of URL shorteners that share the revenue with their users. Om.ly provides real time, multi-dimensional analysis of click-through statistics. Bit.ly offers free click-through statistics and charts. J.mp offers free click-through statistics and charts.
More shortening services include Runs on bit.ly platform and is owned by bit.ly. Digg offers a shortened URL which includes not just the target URL, but an i-framed version that includes a set of Digg-related controls called the Digg bar. Doiop allows the shortening to be selected by the user, and Unicode can be used to achieve really short URLs. For example http://doiop.com/w redirects to Wikipedia’s main page. UrlShort is an open source shortening project. qu.pe offers password protection and the opportunity to add a comment (displayed in a separate frame or page). Sl.ly offers limited statistics, password protection, expiration date, bulk submission and also lets you see what URL’s have been created.
In today’s fast paced society, not many people have time to remember an extremely long url or list it down, letter by letter. Url shortening is essential to meet the demands of today’s time constraints. Read each url shortening provider’s website and see which one seems to offer you the service which fits your needs. Many offer more than just url shortening and have other features to benefit your website. The important thing is to be clear with what you need and find the proper provider.
