List of URL Shorteners Grows Shortener

One of the many URL shorteners has announced that it is shutting down in just under three weeks. Cli.gs has announced, via its blog, that it will no longer accept new URLs to be shortened as of October 25. It will also stop logging analytics. Cli.gs will still forward URLs at through November, but no guarantees have been made beyond that. Since Cli.gs has been a one-man show serving tens of millions of forwards a month and the site owner is funding it from his own pocket, it’s not too much of a surprise

Back in early August another URL shortener called it quits, Tr.im. The argument Tr.im posted on its page was essentially that there is no way to monetize URL shortening and without money to be made, it’s hard to justify further development. Tr.im committed to supporting their Tr.im links through December 31, 2009. However, shortly after that post, Tr.im claimed to be resurrected. Since that announcement, Tr.im has started its progression into an open-source community owned endeavor. Its success is now at the mercy of how much time developers are willing to donate.

Both URL shorteners have, either directly or indirectly, referenced the lack of revenue from their business model, the number of competitors, and the fact that Twitter has standardized on Bit.ly, making it the de facto leader in the Twitterverse, and by extension, much of social media.

URL shorteners work by taking any URL that a user provides and returning a much shorter address that users can paste into a tweet (renowned for the 140 character limit), email messages, or other places where a terribly long link might be cumbersome. Some of them just redirect users right to the target page while some, like the not-so-short Linky.com.au, load the target page into a frame with their brand (and statistics and other link information) sitting at the top of the viewport. In the future, this brand area could be used to serve ads, possibly generating revenue.

The major complaint with URL shorteners is the fact that users cannot always see where the link will take them, which can be a boon for all those fake Twitter accounts trying to link users to porn (sorry, pr0n). This has led to browser add-ons or Twitter applications that can extend the URL as a tool-tip before clicking and being surprised by a screen (and speakers) full of NSFW content.

My additional complaint is that URL shorteners, and specifically their demise, leads to link rot on the web. If any of these services were to shut its doors tomorrow and stop all redirections, the links using those services all become dead-ends. In the case of tweets, we’re talking about millions and millions of tweets that will become nonsense (moreso than many of them are now). For emails, articles, or anything else that relies on these URL shorteners, they also become orphaned references without context. If the Mayans had it right, that could be the End of Days we’re all expecting in 2012.

Even if you don’t believe in the great Linkpocalypse, you should take a few moments to read up on link rot at Wikipedia (an article which is sadly devoid of any mention of URL shorteners).

Update: March 25, 2019

I thought I stopped tracking these 10 years ago. The Google link shortener, goo.gl, is going away on March 30, 2019. Well, its tracking console is; goo.gl stopped accepting new links in April 2018. Google says it will redirect old links, though it does not say for how long.

8 Comments

Reply

"Linkpocalypse", I love it.

Reply

If nothing else, this is at least a forum for my neologisms.

Reply

New professional URL shortener: http://urlof.site
Options: multiple long urls, custom name url, url password, expiry, limited number of url uses, save to folders, private or public url, QR code, statistics and more!

URLofsite; . Permalink
In response to URLofsite. Reply

I am curious what guarantees you can make about how your service will avoid link rot should it eventually change direction. I am also curious if you make any guarantees (or not) about the kinds of links that will be shortened, such as if you have a policy of purging proven malware sites.

I ask this because the context of this entire seven-year-old post is about those very things, so this may not be the best place to promote your service without addressing the concerns raised above. Otherwise your comment just looks like automated spamming.

In response to Adrian Roselli. Reply

Narrator: None. They can make no guarantees since the service went away in 2018.

Reply

Our site has the following safety systems for users:
1. Blacklist keywords;
2. Blacklist Domains;
3. Google Safe Browsing;
4. PhishTank;
5. reCaptcha;
and.. Human verification.

The previous comment is not an automated spamming.

Reply

Use https://geb.li URL Shortener to create short links which you can change their destination in the future if you wanted to do so.
It also has google chrome & microsoft edge extensions.
It is very fast & safe & doesn’t allow spammy links to be shortened.

Mohamed Galal; . Permalink
In response to Mohamed Galal. Reply

This appears to be less than a month old. Do you have some connection to it?

If so, I am curious what guarantees you can make about how your service will avoid link rot should it eventually change direction. I am also curious if you make any guarantees (or not) about the kinds of links that will be shortened, such as if you have a policy of purging proven malware sites.

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