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Cligs URL Shortener Closes
The developer behind the Cli.gs URL shortener service has announced that it will no longer accept requests as of today. Forwarding will continue at least to the end of November and an export option will be forthcoming. Cligs notes that they have tens of thousands of registered user accounts, and completes tens of millions of forwards a month.
While I’ve never used Cligs, it looks like a pretty powerful service. The service offered analytics, geotargeting, an API, custom URLs, social media mentions and was search engine friendly.
There are three reasons listed as to why the Cligs service is shutting down:
- Short URLs are a feature, and are definitely not a business on their own.
- More usage = more customer service demands
- It costs money to run Cli.gs even though the architecture is extremely efficient
There is also a note about adding premium features but that those paid features might conflight with what is offered today. Earlier this year Cli.gs was hacked which redirected over 2 million shortened URLs to a single domain.
While we are on the topic of URL shorteners, it should be an absolute requirement that a preview option is offered. I like how TinyURL allows me to preview the actual URL from the shortened URL. It’s a shame that NY-based Twitter-defauly Bit.ly does not offer the same function. I understand that they are doing some sort of verification behind the scenes and there is a hack that allows for previewing, but just offer it as a standard option. And it’s not just Bit.ly, all URL shorteners should offer this as a standard practice.
[...] months ago we noted that URL shortener Cligs was closing. From our previous post, “The developer behind the Cli.gs URL shortener service has announced [...]
I believe that eventually all the short url services will close down because one day they will realize it can’t make money on its own.
Hootsuite has ow.ly, maybe it will make it.
Bit.ly might survive too.
Other shortening services like digg etc will survive but tinyurl? I don’t know about that.
It was an amazing service. But it is closing down soon.. Can’t wait to see what are the next service that they will give us..
[...] question to longevity of URL shorteners, the popular Cl.igs service has announced on its blog (via CenterNetworks) that it is shutting [...]
Good point and that’s why we should start using URL shorteners with a business behind them like Digg, StumbleUpon… or better yet – stop using any. It doesn’t seem that either TinyURL, or Bit.ly are gonna belly up anytime soon, but still – they are a plague. If you have a browser on your phone, you most probably have a Twitter client, too. What’s the point then to have URLs (even short) in text messages? On the web there shouldn’t be any limitation and URLs should not be included in the character count.
I proposed an idea ago, but people don’t seem to get the beauty of it: when sending tweets to space-limited media (such as SMS), Twitter can use some notation for temporary link IDs and have a validity of let’s say 7 days or those IDs (for example, #1234567). You can always go to m.twitter.com and key in that link ID on your phone, if you care, which in most cases you won’t. On rich clients (web included) and via the API, you always get the original URLs with the link IDs that Twitter can automatically generate for consistency.
What do you think?
I agree with you about the preview option, but I think that might throw quite a few users. If your grandmother were to click on a link, and came across a middle-man verification/preview screen, that might confuse her.
I think the solutions being implemented by apps and sites like TweetDeck, Friendfeed and Brizzly are more user-friendly for the time being.
ok – fair point – so let’s do this – just like TinyURL, i can select the preview or not. On the preview page, let me click a box if the url is spam or hacker. Then those bad links can be reviewed by someone at the URL shortener for handling. I’d like to see one main db for the bad urls that all shorteners can ping.