Webware

URL shortening service Trim is reopening its doors, restoring service to both existing Trim links and the core of the site that lets users make new ones. A company blog post that details the change of plans says that the company will continue to run Trim "indefinitely" while a trustworthy buyer is sought out.

Trim originally began experiencing problems late last week as all of its shortened links stopped working for several hours. Then, over the weekend, the company announced that it would be shutting down come the end of December, taking all of its shortened links with it.

In Tuesday's announcement, the company reiterated that the move to shut down, then re-open was not a publicity stunt, nor will it ever change how the service handles URLs such as adding a framebar or interstitial advertising that forces users to wait, or click through an ad to get to the source link. Such options could bring in revenue, but the company says that would go against the very principals Trim was founded on.

The post also warns other link shortening services that the odds continue to be "stacked" against them with Twitter using competitor Bitly as the built-in link shortener. "This is a basic reality of challenging monopolies," it says. "This type of favoritism will become an issue for all Twitter developers."

While Trim had a heavy following, users may not be willing to come back to it without knowing when or if another company will buy it. It's also unclear how long parent company Nambu Network would be able to continue operating without a buyer, despite the offer to keep running it at a loss.

StumbleUpon's new link shortening site called Su.pr made its public (yet private) launch today. Similar to Bit.ly, it shortens URLs and lets users track where they end up, along with stats on who's clicked on them. It also brings along StumbleUpon's software-free toolbar which lets users hop to both recommended and random links.

However, the real appeal of Su.pr is that it gives each shortened URL the potential for greatness. URLs can be seeded not only to Twitter and Facebook, but also into StumbleUpon's content pool where they can be discovered and promoted by its users. Just like Digg's much loved and hated URL shortening service, this system brings the promise of a longtail from your link showing up as a related item. But in Su.pr's case, the goal isn't to get on the front page as much as it is to become a site that users are recommended to visit, or discover through organic ratings.

Su.pr lets you post links at a later date if you don't feel like shortening something right away. You can also track activity on links after you've shared them with the public.

(Credit: CNET)

Compared to Bit.ly, Su.pr's stats tracking tools are a little more basic. It doesn't grab things like metadata from the URL's source site, or pick up all the places where the link has been re-posted. Although it shows you how many times your link has been re-tweeted on Twitter, and given a rated review on StumbleUpon. It also breaks down traffic sources into two sets of data. One is for the people who click on the link from outside of StumbleUpon. The other is for organic traffic from the site.

In my brief test of the service earlier today, all of my traffic came from outside sources. But if you're a heavy StumbleUpon user with lots of friends on the service, this can be a good way to figure out where those clicks are coming from.

Su.pr has also got some really smart tools for publishers. The first is a way to publish shortened URLs at a later date and time. So say I have a story that's going up in two hours. I can grab that URL before it's live, shorten it, and set it to post to Twitter, Facebook, and StumbleUpon the second it goes live.

Soon it will also let publishers use the shortening service while maintaining domain branding. So instead of using su.pr/XXX, I could set it up to use cnet.com/XXX. It will also be able to be inserted into your site's code, so that each URL you link to is automatically shortened. It does this while maintaining a special domain re-direct that allows search engines to pick up on those source links, even though they've been shortened.

When released, these extra features will set Su.pr apart from the rest of the pack. In the meantime, it's a pretty snappy URL shortener that, like the DiggBar, makes it easy to share links with what is potentially a very large audience with little effort.

If you're interested in using Su.pr ahead of when it opens up to everyone, you can sign up using the invite code suprww. There are only 250, so get 'em while they're hot.

I am a regular user of Amazon.com, and one thing that's always irked me is the company's use of excessively-long URLs. In fact, they are so long that back in 2002 Google increased the number of URL characters it was indexing just to accommodate them.

Now there's a rhyme and reason to this system, but try to explain that to the person who you just dumped a 150-character URL on in your IM conversation.

Instead of using a third-party link shortening service that might not work if it goes down, you should check out AmazonLinks. This small Firefox extension will automatically change any Amazon product URL into one that's far smaller than the original. It does this by replacing all the gobbledygook after the Amazon.com with an Amazon Standard Identification Number (ASIN) that still lives under Amazon's domain, but is about 80 characters shorter.

So this book's URL goes from:

http://www.amazon.com/Idiot-America-Stupidity-Became-Virtue/dp/0767926145/ref=sr_1_1/184-1699140-4241306?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1242146833&sr=8-1
to
http://www.amazon.com/o/ASIN/0767926145/

Now if you want to take this one step further, you can shorten Amazon's URLs by hand using the company's not-yet-announced internal shortening system. This was unearthed by Go2.Me's Mike Koss back in April, and involves dropping the Amazon item number after http://amzn.com/. What I like about this Firefox extension, however, is that you don't even need to worry about digging that information up--it just does it for you.

One thing to note is that this extension is experimental, which means you need to be registered with Mozilla's downloads directory to download it.

Not content to just sit around recovering from Independence Day shenanigans this past weekend, TinyURL released a much-needed feature to its URL-shortening service that others have had for ages: vanity URLs. This means the nonsensical shortened URLs it spits out from your 1,000 character-plus links can now be changed to whatever name you want after the forward slash--that is as long as it hasn't been taken by someone else.

With the popularity of TinyURL and it's automatic integration with services like Twitter, most of the good ones have already been snatched up, so if you're looking to get a vanity mini URL from another similar service, your best bet is to go with one of the little guys. My CNET colleague Nicole Lee did a great roundup on some competitors back in March. Of the bunch, my favorite MooURL has always seemed to have the most open of any, but now that I've told you, the secret is out.

Now you can make TinyURL vanity URLs too.

Moourl.com has the cutest URL shortening site we've seen

(Credit: moourl.com)

Link or URL shortening services are nothing new--TinyURL, for example, has been around since January 2002, when site creator Kevin Gilbertson wanted to link directly to newsgroup postings with really long addresses. Indeed, that's the true impetus behind these services; taking really long and unwieldy Web links (to an Amazon or eBay item, for example), and shrinking them down to a more reasonable size. Simply copy and paste the offending URL into the field, hit enter, and voila, you'll get a much shorter link. These shorter links can then be shared via IM or e-mail without the URL breaking, and they are also very useful with micropublishing tools such as Twitter, where character count is at a premium. Most of these services also redirect the links straight to the original address. There are literally hundreds of these link shortening services out there, but we've decided to break it down to 10 that we like the most. Here they are in no particular order:

• TinyURL: Arguably the most well-known of the services listed here, TinyURL was probably also one of the first. One of TinyURL's most appealing features is that the short URLs it creates will never ever expire. It offers a browser bookmark button that'll provide a TinyURL of your current page, and there's a preview feature as well.

SnipURL is a link shortening service with a social twist.

(Credit: SnipURL)

• SnipURL: Also known as Snurl and Snipr, SnipURL is a URL shortening service with a social twist. You can sign up for an account which lets you edit URLs, subscribe to the RSS feeds of your latest Snips, password protect them, and snip multiple URLs at once. It also has an open API for developers. Twihrl, a multiaccount desktop client for Twitter, uses SnipURL for its long URLs, for example. Another bonus is that you can choose your own "nickname" for a link. For example, http://snipurl.com/cnetcrave will redirect to our Crave blog. Like TinyURL, the SnipURLs will never expire, plus there's also a help forum for support.

• Shorl: For a simpler approach, Shorl is a decent alternative. It has a very clean interface without a lot of ads, plus you can sign up for an account to retrieve the statistics of the shortened links.

• Rurl: Rurl is a URL shortening service ideal for mobile use, since the page is very phone-friendly, and the URL itself is really short (about 19 characters long). The short URL is also good for Twitter, because of its character count limit. Like SnipURL, Rurl also has a developer API.

• Metamark: Metamark also prides itself on providing really short URLs (about 20 characters long), but like SnipURL, Metamark lets you add an optional nickname to a link. There's also a "secret" option to add a secret word after the URL if you don't want people to guess the link. You can sign up for an account if you wish to retrieve the statistics associated with your link. Unlike the above services though, the links from Metamark do expire after five years, so take note of that.

• Notlong: Notlong kicks it up a notch by not only shortening the links, but it also lets you pick a subdomain name. For example, I just created http://webware.notlong.com a second ago. Another great thing about Notlong is that the moment you create a Notlong URL, it presents you with a password with which to check the statistics of the URL, no registration required. However, you'll have to be creative to pick a subdomain that hasn't been chosen already.

Tweetl is a link shortening service built for Twitter.

(Credit: Tweetl)

• Tweetl: With the popularity of Twitter, a service like Tweetl was bound to come along. Its slogan is "Little Links Built for Twitter" and the links are indeed sublimely short (about 17 characters long), which is good for fitting within Twitter's 140 character count limit. You can get stats of any Tweetl link without signing up just by entering the site ID after s.tweetl.com (Like s.tweetl.com/[id]). You can also add a tag to each Tweetl link by adding a question mark and whatever you want at the end of a Tweetl link, such as this: http://t-l.cc/[id]?insert-tag-here.

• URLTea: URLTea has a dead simple user interface--simply paste in your link into the field, hit enter, and the shortened link will immediately be copied to your clipboard. Similar to Tweetl, you can add tags after the URLTea link with a question mark, such as this: http://www.urltea.com/l?insert-tag. We also like the gingham background; it's a nice touch.

• MooURL: MooURL is quite possibly the cutest link shortening site ever, with an adorable cow as its mascot. Like URLTea, a shortened link will be immediately copied to your clipboard. Sure it doesn't have a lot of statistics-tracking like the others, but it's just so cute.

• ICanHaz: Capitalizing on the Lolcat trend is the folks over at ICanHaz.com. Its slogan is "I can haz short urlz now? kthx", which is typical of Lolcat speak. Like SnipURL and MetaMark, you can select a nickname to be added after the URL. For example, http://icanhaz.com/webware directs to Webware. The downside is that you have to enter in your e-mail address if you want to edit the URL in the future. Also, unlike SnipURL and MetaMark, the nickname isn't optional--you have to enter a nickname regardless of whether you want to, and your chosen name might already be taken. However, the best thing about this service is arguably the Lolcat speak aspect of it, for those who are into the Lolcat meme.

If you have any further sites you'd like to recommend, please feel free to leave a comment below.

LinkBunch is a redirection and shortening service for multiple Web links. The service takes as many links as you can throw at it and puts them together in a "bunch," so when users clicks your link they simply come to a link dump with Snap previews of each page. There's also a simple option to open all of them in their browser window.

If you're used to TinyURL, UrlTea, et al, you know these services can be exceptionally useful for taking large links (like the ones you get from browsing on Amazon.com), and shrinking them down for sharing in IM and SMS messages, or a micropublishing tool like Twitter, Pownce, and Jaiku.

The one bummer is that unlike other redirect services, if you simply plug in one link, clicking on the LinkBunch URL will take you the link dump page instead of straight there--something I hope will be added as an option in later iterations. For the lazy, there's also a Firefox plug-in that takes your open tabs and turns them into a LinkBunch automatically--which is handy in case you're scared of copy and paste.

I've created an example LinkBunch of various CNET Networks sites here.