HN Explorer

List of 74 URL Shortening Sites

7 points by nir ↗ HN
I gathered these while working on my own project, perhaps it might useful for someone:

b23.ru bit.ly budurl.com canurl.com cli.gs decenturl.com dolop.com dwarfurl.com easyurl.net elfurl.com ff.im fire.to flq.us freak.to idek.net is.gd ix.lt kl.am korta.nu krunchd.com ln-s.net loopt.us memurl.com miklos.dk moourl.com myurl.in nanoref.com notlong.com ping.fm piurl.com poprl.com qicute.com qurlyq.com reallytinyurl.com redirx.com rubyurl.com rurl.org shorl.com short.ie shorterlink.com shortlinks.co.uk shorturl.com shout.to shrinkurl.us shurl.net simurl.com smallr.com snipr.com snipurl.com snurl.com starturl.com surl.co.uk tighturl.com tinylink.com tinypic.com tinyurl.com tr.im traceurl.com twurl.nl u.mavrev.com ur1.ca url-press.com url.ie url9.com urlcut.com urlhawk.com urlpass.com urlx.ie xaddr.com xrl.us yep.it yuarel.com yweb.com zurl.ws

(I'll try to keep an updated copy here: http://niryariv.wordpress.com/2009/04/04/list-of-url-shortening-sites/ )

21 comments

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joshwprinceton
lol - i still don't get how bit.ly is valued so high, esp. in light of this.

thanks for the links!

nir
No problem.

(BTW I'm not sure bit.ly was a bad investment. Common sense might say so, but that has little to do with which Web companies get bought and for how much. If I was a VC I'd put some chips on a URL shortener, and bit.ly is one of the better (and hyped) ones right now)

sachinag
bit.ly's really interesting in that it comes out Betaworks - since it's so closely tied to Twitter, and so many of Betaworks' investments are built on Twitter (Summize, StockTwits, Tweetdeck), they can help push adoption. It's a nice little keiretsu of related companies.
nir
Yeah, I suppose it would make sense for Twitter to provide URL shortening themselves, and they'd probably buy someone like bit.ly for this - so betting $2m on it makes some sense (as much as anything makes sense in this area).
joshwprinceton
yeah, i see the twitter connection - definitely a good tech synergy there, but would it cost them that much to do it in-house?
andr
I think reallytinyurl.com missed the point.
nir
Yeah I found it kind of funny too :)
unalone
Haha, I'd never seen that, and it's made by Contrast.io - one of my favorite web development firms.
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andrewl-hn
Add tinyarro.ws - they use a bunch of domains for the URLs themselves.
charlesju
URL shortening is getting way out of hand. It's the worst get-rich-quick scheme ever.
adrianwaj
why is there none with a 3 letter domain http://a.aa ?

I wonder how easy it'd be too run a CNAME or something on any or all of these services with a 3 letter domain, then add to it digg.com functionality (http://a.aa/ add url here to be shortened here) and then tie it automatically or user-select to any of these services, switching to another, (even reproducing for historic links) if one goes down?

Why not just build a new service? - well you can keep you're existing account/s and have theses nice extra features. (only the services with the shortest url lengths used, fastest creation times, and ones that don't monetize)

adrianwaj
I used weeit.com once and now it's dead.

http://qurl.co.uk is one of the originals and is super-fast - except for the domain name length, a good benchmark for speed, simplicity and contraction.

Also: h3o.de and digg.com

kamathln
You missed http://tagz.in . Yes, Tagz is a bookmarking site, but it also gives a short URL. I had suggested the developer to add the Short URL facility to all pages, but is unfortunately available only on the user's own saved page. If enough people ask, the developer might give the facikity for all links.
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