Best URL shortener

Best URL shortener

I would like to have the best URL shorterner. The shorter the better. I currently use <a href="http://bt.gd">http://bt.gd</a>.

I prefer bit.ly which comes with a lot of browser & website plug-ins.

TinyURL

All of them you suggested shorten the url to longer than 18 characters! Like http://bit.ly/9GYStL and http://tinyurl.com/yhhsgvb

Is there any URL shortener that shorten the URL to less than 18 characters? Bt.gd shorten to 18 characters (http://bt.gd/1sE)

Originally posted by wikipedian:

All of them you suggested shorten the url to longer than 18 characters

So? You asked for the best URL shortener.

TweaK.tk allegedly generates the shortest URLs.

Using this topic URL:
http://a1xtp.tk
http://bt.gd/1sM
http://tinyurl.com/yanz3r7

So far Pesala's is winning... by 1 char... but naturally the more the site is used, and depending on how long the links remain active, changes how long the shortened URL will be... so the winner one month, might be the loser the next...

Edit: http://u.nu/6rb95 from http://u.nu/ (17)... is one char longer than bt.gd... but, still under 18 chars...
http://3.ly/v7e (15) is the same as Tweak.tk...

Originally posted by Vectronic:

So far Pesala's is winning... by 1 char... but naturally the more the site is used, and depending on how long the links remain active, changes how long the shortened URL will be... so the winner one month, might be the loser the next...

Which brings up the point, what does "best" in this instance refer to? Shortest? Most potential longevity? Least downtime/overloaded? If I used something I'd rather it didn't disappear in a couple of months...

None, since the only legitimate reasons for using such a thing is either rickrolling someone, or making certain that anyone who KNOWS something about the internet will never follow your link.

True in most cases, except stuff like Twitter, Messengers, Signature, or Status type message on a Website where generally the people reading it, already know you, and either trust you, or not... and they don't support proper a href=...etc, or are otherwise limited.

Something like the URL for this:
http://my.opera.com/lounge/forums/topic.dml?id=405731&t=1266029310&page=1#comment4197201

Huge part of the message and just an obfuscated mess, it's even worse if you are linking to a certain product on a website, it's usually longer, and much messier.

eBay example:
http://cgi.ebay.com/Gaming-Desktop-i5-750-OC-GTX-275-1TB-RAID-0-4GB_W0QQitemZ320485049487QQcmdZViewItemQQptZDesktop_PCs?hash=item4a9e65c48f

Amazon example:
http://www.amazon.com/Acer-AOD250-1695-10-1-Inch-Blue-Netbook/dp/B0007SQED2/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&s=pc&qid=1266030174&sr=1-2

NewEgg example:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductList.aspx?Submit=ENE&N=2032280010%204022%201308920938%201141949556&name=750%282.66GHz%29

... if you are actually considering buying one of them, or curious which one is the best, you might want to shorten it, since you might be sharing it in different places...

Having said that, excluding random tests like earlier in this forum, I've never used a URL shortener... but... they can have their uses.

If you are just shortening http://www.opera.com ... then yeah, yer just an idiot...lol

Originally posted by deathshadow:

None, since the only legitimate reasons for using such a thing is either rickrolling someone, or making certain that anyone who KNOWS something about the internet will never follow your link.

Exactly. I never follow those links.

The BEST way to post links is with simple HTML:

 <a href="long-url-here.tld">Shortcut Text Here</a> 

Or in BBCode:

 [url=long-url-here.tld]Shortcut Text Here[/url] 

You can make the text anything you want (ie; Newegg Item Description)

The Amazon example from above: Acer AOD250-1695 10.1-Inch Blue Netbook

Doing this displays the shortcut text, but users can hover over the link and see the true URL which cannot be done using services like those posted by others above.


NEVER FOLLOW BLIND LINKS

But now try it on Facebook, Twitter, or an Instant Messenger that has a char limit, or doesn't support HTML, or a phone, or anything using SMS.

Facebook even made it's own URL Shortener, http://fb.me/UserName, and still doesn't support HTML/BB in status, comments, or descriptions on images, etc... many other sites are the same...

You could argue that "<i>but those are all stupid</i>" sure...lol, but millions of people use them, and they continue to have the limitations...so, it's inevitable... URL Shortners.

I would never consider using FB or Twitness.

lol. i will post after i complete building my URL shortening site

I don't use URI shorteners, I just use a part of my website I've hidden for the past 5 years.

http://twitter.com/Frenzie/status/8919018976

The full URI of most of my posts would eat half or over half of Twitter's available message length.

As soon as a URI exceeds 30-40 characters or so, shortening it becomes pretty much a necessity. Of course URIs that are more than 140 characters won't even post...

Originally posted by Vectronic:

You could argue that "but those are all stupid" sure...lol, but millions of people use them, and they continue to have the limitations...so, it's inevitable... URL Shortners.

They're definitely all stupid.

They're definitely all stupid.

No, you're wrong. They're very helpful now and help us in many ways. URL shortners are very helpful utilities that cover the limitations that the web and technology as we know it DO have vs. our actual memory.
In in ideal world, all links would be short enough to copy down because that's how the services would provide them... nice and organized and easy to copy.
In the real world, it's not like that at all...

I could give you at least ten examples if you want that URL shortners are incredibly useful.

Originally posted by myoperarocks:

They're definitely all stupid.

No, you're wrong. They're very helpful now and help us in many ways. URL shortners are very helpful

I could give you at least ten examples if you want that URL shortners are incredibly useful.

No, he's right. URL shorteners should not be used. See my post above (Friday, 12. February 2010, 22:47:13) for the PROPER way to shorten a long URL.

Originally posted by myoperarocks:

No, you're wrong. They're very helpful now and help us in many ways. URL shortners are very helpful utilities that cover the limitations that the web and technology as we know it DO have vs. our actual memory.

Whose actual memory? I can assure you that computers from the '80s wouldn't have a problem with today's "long URIs" either and as a human I think that someones.name.com/archives/some-sort-of-title is much more memorable than something along the lines of sdf4DE

Originally posted by myoperarocks:

In in ideal world, all links would be short enough to copy down because that's how the services would provide them... nice and organized and easy to copy.

In an "ideal world" the long URIs wouldn't count as characters and they'd just be links as shown above (where only the text inside the link would count).

Originally posted by myoperarocks:

I could give you at least ten examples if you want that URL shortners are incredibly useful.

Of course you will have to exclude examples that are only relevant on Facebook, Twitter, etc. There's one that I can think of, which would be copying a URI from a magazine (read: paper publication). a) the magazine saves precious real paper space, and b) it could potentially be easier to copy. However, as I outlined earlier in this post I wouldn't be surprised if it were harder either.

The shortest: http://to./yqx.

The best: http://5z8.info/olive-loaf-penetration.gif_m3g6u_b00bs

No, the best and simplest is either basic HTML or BBCode whichever the board you're on supports.

@Y0Y0
Some (twitter for example) support neither.

Then don't be a Twit.

Originally posted by lucideer:

The best: http://5z8.info/olive-loaf-penetration.gif_m3g6u_b00bs

Thanks for sharing this!

I did check it out, it's safe ... assuming your boss doesn't jump to conclusions anyway.

Originally posted by lucideer:

The best: http://5z8.info/olive-loaf-penetration.gif_m3g6u_b00bs

Is that shadyurl i'm seeing there?

It's indeed the greatest, I use it to send links to all my friends. They enjoy clicking the links to see where it takes them (And if they don't, well... at least I had my fun )
(My friends usually ask something like 'can you send me a link to your blog? They never ask 'Can you send me a direct link to your blog?'
And so I usually answer something like: http://5z8.info/getPersonalData-start_a9x2r_smut)
* insert evil laugh here *

I do miss the 'preview' function that tinyurl has though...

Googles shortener: goo.gl
Not very usable for general use; requires either Chrome /w an an extension, or Google Toolbar.
http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2009/12/making-urls-shorter-for-google-toolbar.html

Originally posted by AnonCrow:

Googles shortener: goo.gl
Not very usable for general use; requires either Chrome /w an an extension, or Google Toolbar.
http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2009/12/making-urls-shorter-for-google-toolbar.html

so you need to install spyware on your computer to use it?

not worth it

Originally posted by AnonCrow:

Googles shortener: goo.gl

There's an Opera Widget for that.

Originally posted by Vectronic:

Amazon example:
http://www.amazon.com/Acer-AOD250-1695-10-1-Inch-Blue-Netbook/dp/B0007SQED2/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&s=pc&qid=1266030174&sr=1-2

... if you are actually considering buying one of them, or curious which one is the best, you might want to shorten it, since you might be sharing it in different places...

Having said that, excluding random tests like earlier in this forum, I've never used a URL shortener... but... they can have their uses.

If you are just shortening http://www.opera.com ... then yeah, yer just an idiot...lol

Sometimes people want to shorten links because their mail software arbitrarily wraps unspaced lines at the length configured in their message composition options. Some software, such as Forte Agent, does not wrap any links, not even plain text ones. However, sometimes you can shorten links just by knowing something about how links are generated. In your Amazon example, I could take you to that same page with this link:

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/B0007SQED2

On some links, much of the information following a "?" is just extraneous information. With a little experimentation, you can omit much of that information from the link and it'll still work. For example, these two links load the same page on the Fox News website:

http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2010/04/08/fox-news-poll-health-care-midterm-elections/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+foxnews%2Flatest+%28Text+-+Latest+Headlines%29

http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2010/04/08/fox-news-poll-health-care-midterm-elections/

Damaeus

The reason I've used bit.ly is I can customize the URL to something I can remember when I have to get to a site that's got a huge URL on multiple computers... where I won't have a common bookmark, or e-mailing a bunch of people is impractical etc... I've got to type it in, so if I can type in a rememberable URL-much better.

This one is the best in my opinion, multiple domain names to choose and they pay you if someone clicks your links, it's not that much but on the other hand, the others don't pay anything and do the same.
http://adf.ly