New Kid on the Shortened URL Block: is.gd

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.

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

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

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