New Kid on the Shortened URL Block: is.gd

Posted on April 19, 2008 by Hutch Carpenter

Quick post. I’m seeing more long URLs shorted with the service is.gd. I, like most people, use tinyurl.com to shorten URLs. It’s great. But if you’re posting a URL on Twitter, those extra few characters in a TinyURL eat into your 140-character limit.

is.gd goes even further. Here’s an example comparing the two services:

Blog post: FriendFeed RSS Is a Fantastic Discovery Tool

Full URL: http://bhc3.wordpress.com/2008/04/05/friendfeed-rss-is-a-fantastic-discovery-tool/

  • 82 characters

TinyURL: http://tinyurl.com/6qhk4n

  • 25 characters

is.gd: http://is.gd/7oc

  • 16 characters

So there’s a pick-up of 9 characters via is.gd. Can be quite valuable on Twitter, eh?

It doesn’t have a toolbar button, which makes converting URLs really easy with TinyURL. That’d be a nice addition.`

For a nice read on several different URL shorteners, check out Carlo Maglinao’s post on TechBays.

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2 Responses to “New Kid on the Shortened URL Block: is.gd”

  1. Carlo Maglinao, on April 19th, 2008 at 8:14 am Said:

    Hutch, that’s a smart find. An even shorter url.

    But the services I use to tweet, TwitThis and Mahalo Follow, both use tinyurl. =(

    Carlo

  2. Twitter Ecosystem: Short URLs « Technology, Mobility, Usability and other Musings, on April 19th, 2008 at 11:33 pm Said:

    [...] BHC3 demonstrates via an example in his blog [...]

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