bit.ly hits the URL-shortener deck running hard

Tony Austin
Sunday, 07 September 2008 10:30

Opinion and Analysis

This is where URL-shortening services come in to play. These allow you to specify a short URL (within our golden rule of being no more that 15 characters or so). This short URL then automatically redirects to the desired long URL. There are many URL-shortening services -- possibly the most famous being TinyURL -- and they're very popular, generally with advantages that outweigh the relatively few disadvantages.

For example, you probably wouldn't bother using TinyURL to refer to the iTWire home page "itwire.com" which converts to "tinyurl.com/6aedc7" and is no saving at all. The only reason you'd do it this way is if you had a style guide policy of referencing each and every resource via its TinyURL shortcut.

But using the TinyURL approach does comes in handy for referencing my iTWire blogging section "itwire.com/content/blogsection/47/1135/"  as "tinyurl.com/5fw5mf"

Note that all the examples deliberate omitting the "http://" prefix. This is favoured by web journalists, since it looks neater and saves valuable screen space in print (even though not a precise rendering of the full URLs).

As of August 2008, there's a new player in the field, and it may be setting a scorching pace. It's called bit.ly (the appendage "ly" looks cute, and indicates it's a Libyan domain registration).

It does the same as the others, for example yielding the NASA shuttle and rocket launch schedules site "www.nasa.gov/missions/highlights/schedule.html" as "bit.ly/Flayz"

It goes a bit further, allowing you to try entering (optionally) a preferred keyword string. So when I entered "NASA_schedule" it gave me the friendlier short URL "bit.ly/NASA_schedule" (which may not be quite as short, but certainly gives more sense of meaning to the short URL).

However there's a lot more to bit.ly than this.

PLEASE READ ON...