Battle of URL Shorteners

In today’s Web-inspired lifestyle, there is nothing better than to share interesting URLs that contains videos, pictures, profiles and almost every stuff that could be found on the Net.

Sharing URLs are a part of social networking and communication. It is a way of sharing updates and news. It has grown to be a daily activity for most of the people on the Internet.

We send it thru Plurk, Friendster, Twitter and on online forums. These sites set up a character limit. For example, the comment character on Friendster is 800+, Plurk’s Plurk character limit is 100+ and Twitter’s tweet character limit is 140+. But URLs seem to grow ever more longer, and it becomes a problem for netizens to have more space to type on. For example, this URL, http://tv.yahoo.com/the-biggest-loser/show/37103/photos/1 , contains 57 characters, leaving you with only 50+ characters on Plurk and Twitter to say what you want to say.

Longer URLs are not also friendly to forum signatures, wherein some forums set up a character limit. As for FriendsterTalk, there is a 400 character limit, and having a long URL gives you short space to input more.

As demands for a shorter URL increases, new ways to shorten them comes up. Popular today is TinyURL, where a long URL of infinite characters can be shortened down to 25 characters.

TinyURL is an example of a URL redirection site, which offers shorter links that when clicked, will redirect to the original one, which is usually longer.

TinyURL is widespread, and 386 of the 1000 most popular sites has links directing to them. Made on 2002, this website has grown to serve more than 200 million URLs, and is continually growing every day. It has only been funded by donations and advertisements.

But behind the popularity, TinyURL has suffered from major issues. According to a source, “TinyURL obscures the original address, and as a result it's sometimes used to redirect to an unexpected site. Examples of this are rickrolling, redirecting to scam and affiliate websites, or shock sites; ZoneAlarm has given the warning "TinyURL may be unsafe. This website has been known to distribute spyware.” “. TinyURL is also prone to spams, for when clicking it, you do not know where you are going.

Giant websites have responded from the dangers of TinyURL. MySpace banned users from posting TinyURLs in 2006, which was followed by Yahoo! Answers the same year. Recently, Orkut and Wikipedia joined the growing lists of websites who are banning TinyURLs, and more disastrously for TinyURL, Twitter has changed its default URL shortener.

Along comes the biggest contender of TinyURL, bit.ly. Though only started not more than a year ago, bit.ly has grown to be one of the most popular URL shortening websites in the world. It’s traffic rankings is 957, more than a 9,000 place jump from its position just three months ago.

Bit.ly is viewed as a revolutionary URL shortening site. In fact, the one replaced TinyURL as the default URL shortener of Twitter is bit.ly.

Bit.ly has many advantages against his rival TinyURL. First, its shortened URL is at maximum, 20 characters long only, adding five more characters to all your words compared to TinyURL’s 25.

You can also make an account on bit.ly, and on that way, all the URLs that you have shortened will be remembered. So, you do not have to copy that URL again and reproduce another shortened link for it.

All bit.ly URLs that you made with your account are unique, meaning, even though other users have shortened the same URL, you’ll get a different URL from his. You are the only one who has that exact URL.

Bit.ly’s another edge is that information is gathered from that link. You can see how many have clicked it, the number of referrals and the location data for bit.ly URL. And since it is the default URL shortener of Twitter, you can also see from their page whether that link has been a subject of a conversation or not.

As of now, TinyURL is still ahead of bit.ly in the web traffic rankings, with TinyURL at 383, and bit.ly at 957.


Bit.ly is fast approaching TinyURL in traffic rankings. Bit.ly, also, has not unleashed its weapon, the search engine results. Search engines hit TinyURL more often, for it is the most popular to date. After bit.ly begins to gain ground on Twitter and is spread on the Web, bit.ly will also increase its search engine popularity, bringing its rank further up.

“It is still way to early to call a winner here, but the next six months will be an interesting time as these URL shorteners reinvent what it means to be an URL shortener, fight over market share, and come up with business models that allow them to sustain their business for the long haul.” Geoffrey Mack, a web analysts say.