How To Cut A Long URL Short

(This post was originally made a few months ago at the loose wire blog. As part of efforts to streamline Loose Wire's online activities, the material at loose wire cache is being moved to the blog. A list of the resources can be under either the Resources list in the sidebar or the Resources category, also in the sidebar.)

A way to turn long URLs into short ones, so you can paste links into emails without them wrapping (and therefore becoming unusable) etc etc. In most cases you just visit the site, enter the URL you want to abbreviate, and hey presto! you get a new short URL that should last forever. (A lot of them can be added to your browser toolbar via Javascript which makes the whole thing even easier.)

• TinyURL
• snipURL
• Metamark
• shortlink
• v3.net
• shorl.com
• makeashorterlink.com
• ek.dk
• minilien.com
• tinylink.com
• qurl.net
• urljr.com
• babyurl.com
• tinyclick.com
• lin.kz
• EvilURL (thanks Jim Hughes)

This is not yet exhaustive; much of this list is from notlong.com, which compares their features.

Comments

[Jim Hughes]

There's also the inimitable EvilURL http://evilurl.com/

[Francesco]

You forgot the best.

http://url123.com

[Spam Links]

http://kuerzer.de/
http://csua.org/u/
http://www.rapp.org/url/
http://qwer.org/
http://tinyurl.co.uk/
http://shorterlink.com/

Not forgetting the inverted logic of:

http://www.hugeurl.com/

[URL Cutter Service User]

I see too much of URLs for URL Shortening / URL redirection service. But let me recommend you one more site, called URL Cutter : urlcutter.com

And I am impressed with the work they have put in. The real value add, they have is the statistics about the URLs you create, but for that you have to signup with them. The other things are cool.

[Mohit]

Here is another one

http://tiny.mastiland.com

[jagus]

new and very short

[jagus]

http://smarturl.eu
new and very short

[JaGa]

http://smarturl.eu
new and very short

[Rick]

http://sn.vc uses 301 redirects, allow to preview the URL and it's short too...