Tiny Url Or Not…
Once upon a time, there were many long, cumbersome domain names which haunted internet marketers and surfers as well. These website domain names would be so long, that they would or could potentially break in emails or other communication conduits, therefore rendering the link unclickable. Of course, the recipient of the message could copy and paste the link into a browser, but in many cases that never happened. Or sometimes they wouldn’t copy the entire link before pasting it into the browser resulting in a “Page Not Found” error.
Until one fine day, a tiny url came along. This tiny url was generated by a magical tool that would take a long website domain name and transform those long cumbersome links to a much shorter version. They would also be encrypted using a combination of letters or numbers, so there was no way to know where the link would take you.
I know I was afraid to click on them when I first saw them. The dreaded “Pop Up” message was a welcome compared to this masked, cloaked, alias. Who knew what dark alley of a website full of ogres, trolls or naked women it would take you to? Yes, it was a favorable tool used by the porn industry marketers as well as other not so legitimate traffickers.
Back in the real world, the tiny url tool came on the scene circa 2002. www.Tinyurl.com was probably the first out there; to my knowledge and is one of the more popular ones. Many other tools with the same capabilities followed such as www.BudURL.com or www.PIUrl.com. There are literally dozens of these link shrinking sites available.
One of the benefits of these new born URLs; aside from they don’t take up a lot of real estate, is that they don’t expire. So you can store and reuse them indefinitely unless the service you used closes its’ doors. In Dec 2009, www.Tr.im almost did that. I guess it would be a good idea to keep a log where you’ve planted all these little url’s. Imagine posting them in thousands of blogs, articles and forums? Now imagine that you have to go and replace them? YIKES!
Some of these URL shortening tools transmuted into something more than an alias creating device. They now have become highly sophisticated with the potential to customize your alias and provide statistics to see your click-through results. Hey everyone, the domain name wars are back.
With all the social media websites out there like Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, etc; which limit the number of characters allowed in the message you send, has created a tiny url frenzy. So the once convenient popular site, which contains a WHOPPING 15 characters (including the dots) now has heavy competition other tools that consist of fewer characters in their own domain name. The shortest of the url shortening tools with only 8 characters (including the dots) that I could find is. “Z.PE”.
So the once leader of the pack www.TinyURL.com has taken a back seat to www.Bit.ly which is now the Twitter url shortening tool of choice. Bit.ly over took the lead last year. If you wish to see the photo finish results go to www.Compete.com
Some websites have created the tool or pooled resources as a service that you could use to shorten your links right on their site. Stumble Upon has created www.Su.pr and HootSuite.com teamed up with www.Ow.ly.
To date, all of these tools are “free to use” which is great. I haven’t come across any that imposed a fee. That doesn’t mean that it won’t cost us something down the line. Many of these free services are offering toolbars which can be added to your browser. With all the toolbars that some people have on their browser, I wonder how they can read the page at all. I’m sure these toolbars will have some sort of ad space available.
In my travels to research this article I was able to find the anti-Christ of the tiny url tools which is http://freakinghugeurl.com. This site takes even the smallest size url & converts it to one of three sizes; (Huge, Freakin’ Huge & Holy Crap!). So a little itsy bitsy url like http://z.pe; which is a total of 11 characters soaking wet, was to the morphed into this 667 character url below, which then takes you back to, you’ll never guess: http://freakinghugeurl.com.
When I attempted to post the actual link it wouldn’t wrap & ran off the blog, so I had to post an image instead. Amusing, isn’t it?
In closing, I can’t help but say; “It’s a small World Wide Web after all”.
Thank You and GOD Bless,
Mario Puglia
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