We’ve all used them: services that allow us to take that horrendously long URL and compress it into a manageable size so it won’t take up too many precious characters in our tweets.
Here at Tweetmeme, we’re constantly downloading and storing your tweets with links in, so we’re in a unique position of being able to tell you exactly how many of you are using which URL-shortening service, and how they’re competing. We’ve taken a couple of weeks worth of data from Tweetmeme , and compiled the top 5 URL shorteners.
|
Site |
Market Share (%) |
|---|---|
| tinyurl.com | 75.49 |
| bit.ly | 13.02 |
| ff.im | 4.87 |
| is.gd | 4.36 |
| twurl.nl | 2.26 |
As you can see, Tinyurl.com is clearly in the lead at the moment – this is most probably because it is the default service that both Twitter and Twhirl use (TweetDeck uses Bit.ly by default, but can use others) to shorten users’ URLs when required.
But we can do more than that – we’ve stored data from when the links are posted over time, so we can show you how the use is trending over time.
Use of top 5 URL shortening services over a 2-week period.
Close-up of services not including Tinyurl.com.
how do i install the tiny url thing? I also would like to be able to convert my blog onthedarkside.wordpress.com and send links via twitter.
Help? I am not real tech savvy.
Thanks
Just go to Http://www.Tinyurl.com
@John Dark
You can not install tiny url, it is a service you use.
If you have a hosted WordPress blog then use the Tweet This plugin: http://btwendel.com/notes/tweet-this-plugin-for-wordpress
With the added functionality of bit.ly, specially on reporting clicks, I’m predicting this service will dig into tinyurl’s share in no time.
Any idea of the market share of cli.gs ?
Is there a benefit to using one URL shortener as opposed to another? I have used tinyurl.com and bit.ly, but none of the others. I just wondered if there was any advantage to using one of the specific services you’ve listed. If not, why are we studying their prevalence of use?
krissy knox
follow me on twitter:
http://www.twitter.com/iamkrissy
Haven’t used all of them, but tr.im is my preferred shortener… it’s one of the shortest and gives traffic reports (but I’ll have to check out all the others before becoming a fanboy).
John: go to the respective websites of the shortening services. It’s pretty self-explanatory from there. Nothing to install.
Pitchers, cl.gs represents about 0.9% of all shortened URL’s.
Problem is, Tinyurl wastes at least 5 characters right of the bat with their domain name alone, and then does things like stripping out your # anchor extensions, e.g. when trying to link back to a specific blog comment (is.gd does the same BTW).
While some of the other services help in some way, they each have their own quirks, like wanting to own your stats data, or not allowing custom extensions when creating the shortened URLs from their bookmarklets.
I’ve come up with a completely free, no-strings-attached solution using a WordPress theme hack, that allows you to own your very own Tinyurl-like service. Check it out here:
http://3on.us/why-diy-tinyurl
[...] Tweetmeme har man sammanställt en lista på de fem mest populära förkortningstjänsterna i världen. Nedan ser du vilka det [...]
I was hoping I’d never have to learn any of this. I just want to write and design interiors. I use tiny for tweets, but didn’t realize I had a choice. Totally clueless. Do I use these for writing posts on WordPress from my iPhone? Or just for Twitted? File my blog tech knowledge under ” doh”. Will you come to my house and explain the world to me? I’ll decorate your house.
Nice to see this update on the URL shortner world.
Even though Tiny URL has the big jump (obviously!), bit.ly is starting to come up nicely at ~13%. Another nice thing is that when you hit the retweet button – it’s a bit.ly created URL.
Thank you for helping to spread the word about how cool and up and coming bit.ly is these days!
Questions or concerns about bit.ly? Drop me a line anytime!
Rex @
bit.ly
http://tinyarro.ws/ Can get a URL down to something like 10 characters. It’s great for saving space in tweets.
[...] an $8 million pre-money valuation ($10 million post-money). Its market share of shortened links, as calculated by Tweetmeme, is only 13 percent. The biggest URL shortner out there is actually TinyURL, which commands a 75 [...]
[...] でも、おもしろい計算がある。bit.lyが株の20%を投資家たち（O’Reilly Alpha Tech Fund、Mitch Kapor、Howard Lindzon）に売ったとすると、調達前の評価額は$8M（800万ドル）という意味になる（調達後は1000万ドル）。同社の短縮URL業界におけるマーケットシェアは、Tweetmemeの計算によればわずかに13%だ。業界トップはTinyURLで、シェアは75%だ。だからbit.lyの価値が800万ドルなら、TinyURLの価値は少なくとも$46M（4600万ドル）になるはず。投資家たちも、やはりこんな計算をするだろう。 [...]
[...] are also some metrics on which are most used such as from Tweetmeme (ff.im is listed there, but that’s simply FriendFeed’s internal shortener and not [...]
SmallerLink.com lets you customize your ending, so that you can always remember where your photo albums are, or directions to your house, etc. We also track clicks, and let you browse through the history to see what others are shortening (and if you want you can keep your links hidden from the public list).
http://SmallerLink.com any thoughts and suggestions are more than appreciated.
Have fun guys,
Mike
[...] – it allows you to track links. This is very useful for many Twitter users and Bit.ly has a smidge over thirteen per cent of the URL shortening market share (behind the wildly popular, but less useful, [...]
[...] 2:16 pm on April 11, 2009 | 0 Permalink | Reply Tags: @links Shorten It: Most popular URL shorteners. tinyurl.com – 75.49%, bit.ly – 13.02%. Interesting. [...]
A big problem with some of these shorteners is that they aren’t consistent with the shortened URLs. This is a problem when trying to get the shortened URL for a blog post, for example, to look up tweetbacks.
Here’s an example: Tweetmeme returned this Bitly URL for one of my blog posts
http://bit.ly/3DPhKA
When I go to Bitly and type in the same long URL, I get a different shortened link:
http://bit.ly/1HmBeu
You can see that both shortened links lead to the same URL.
The same thing goes for TinyURL:
http://tinyurl.com/dha7vr (generated by Tweetmeme)
http://tinyurl.com/dnakmd (generated by me)
So if I search all tweets looking for http://tinyurl.com/dnakmd (when they tweeted with http://tinyurl.com/dha7vr ), it won’t find their tweets, even though they are out there.
I’m also curious why Tweetmeme would use Bitly for one post and TinyURL for another?
But this isn’t a problem with the plugin, it’s just an issue with URL shorteners in general (although I’ve heard is.gd is consistent). Anyone know a way around this? I’ve been racking my brains and looking online for some way to force the URL shorteners to be consistent with their shortened URLs.
John
[...] the granddaddy of URL shorterners, trails with 44 percent. By comparison, in late March, Tweetmeme calculated that TinyURL made up 75 percent of shared links and Bit.ly, 13 [...]
[...] digging – gave them some huge URLs to convert using just the homepage of each service. I chose the top services from Tweetmeme’s recent study, minus friendfeed’s internal shortener, to come up with [...]
[...] You need a short url like as bit.ly, cli.gs, is.gd, ff.im, tinyurl and so on, just make sure that it’s easy to memorable, has some meaning or simple that represents that it’s short url generator or someting like that — otherwise you have to go for Branding. Such as, I have short url generator at http://yourls.in. You know, I tried tons of domain and price was another issue and luckily I got a good urls. YORLS.IN or YOURLS.IN or YOURLS.IN. It’s simple and easy to remember.If you’re excited little bit, you can do great things by giving free service of your short url generating service, see at If bit.ly Is Worth $8 Million, TinyURL Is Worth At Least $46 Million. Also, see Chris who shared the growth rate and market share results through graph on Shorten It: Most popular URL shorteners. [...]
Please add support for http://yourls.org/, which has an API, but requires a username and password rather than a key.
Great stats. But mostly people used bit.ly to short URLs. Dont know much about tinyurl
Even though Tiny URL has the big jump (obviously!), bit.ly is starting to come up nicely at ~13%. Another nice thing is that when you hit the retweet button – it’s a bit.ly created URL.