clean url Archive

Two 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 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.”

Today Cligs announced that the service has been acquired by Mister Wong.  Mister Wong is Germany’s largest social bookmarking service and we selected it as a Top 10 German Internet service.

I tried to get Cligs developer Pierre Far to share the amount of the acquisition but he would only reply with, “undisclosed.” Pierre did note, “I only considered serious buyers who would obviously take good care of Cligs’ existing users. For that, Mister Wong is a great choice and a large part of why they won out. Kai Tietjen, founder of Mister Wong, summarized their motivation by saying that, “Cligs is a complete service with a unique set of tools and a solid user base. Competition is healthy for the market and it would be a real shame to see such a useful service disappear. We are happy to add Cligs to our existing portfolio of Web 2.0 services and we look forward to welcoming all its users to the Wong family.”

Far will stay on during the transition but it appears will not continue on with the Mister Wong team.

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.

Web analytics service Clicky has announced the launch of a URL shortener. I don’t write much about URL shorteners because frankly they are way over-hyped. Dave Winer has been posting a lot about the category so check out his blog for more information and education.

In my scan this morning for the Today’s 10, I noticed that Clicky is now offering a URL shortener of their own. The difference with the Clicky shortener (clicky.me) is that it’s directly tied into your Clicky analytics account. You must have a Clicky account to use the shortener.

They compare the Clicky shortener to the Twitter default shortener Bit.ly. Clicky notes that the biggest difference is that Bit.ly stops tracking the user when they arrive to your site while Clicky continues to track the user within their analytics tool. Maybe one day Twitter will allow users to select which shortener we want to use though that’s doubtful especially with their recent click tracking test.

Clicky now allows for segmentation of users and data by short url. They also boast that their offering only tracks humans not evil bots, search robots and other Internet crud.

In typical Clicky fashion they discuss the revenue model for Clicky.me. There isn’t one – well that’s not completely true. There won’t be any direct revenue from the offering but it should drive new users to the Clicky service and will strengthen the overall offering.

One of the comments on the announcement post wonders if spammers will use it since the shortener will work with the free version. If they moved it to paid-only plans, the new offering could help with conversions.

I’ve been using moourl for my shortening needs as it’s quick and has a cow on the page. The only real suggestion I have for all of the shorteners is to offer the preview option that TinyURL does. I never have a worry clicking a TinyURL as I know I will hit a page from which I can decide to proceed. Bit.ly apparently only offers this if you hack the URL (wtf) and I don’t know if Clicky’s offering allows for a preview but here’s hoping they add it. Safety will become more important with short URLs as more of the evil gets a hold of them. 

Continue reading “Clicky Launches Powerful Integrated URL Shortener” »

There’s been a lot of talk the past couple of weeks about URL shorteners and the new DiggBar. Even Leah Culver, former partner to Kevin Rose on Pownce, has come out against the methods of the DiggBar. One of the issues with the DiggBar is that it "frames" the content of the site which can lead to a variety of issues. Daring Fireball has laid out his concerns with the DiggBar yesterday.

So what does Jason Calacanis, founder of Q&A service Mahalo, think about the concept of framing? Appears he hates it when Facebook does it but loves it when Digg does it.

Facebook:

Digg:

This morning I headed down to the Apple Soho neighborhood to meet with the team at Betaworks. I wanted to find out more about the URL shortener that’s apparently a tech blogger’s dream. The name of the URL shortener is bit.ly and bloggers including Marshall Kirkpatrick were in love with the tool like nothing else. Before we get into bit.ly, here’s some details on Betaworks.

Betaworks is a NYC company that helps startups move forward. They were quick to say they aren’t a vc or an incubator like Y Combinator is. They have a variety of NYC-based companies they either work with or invest in. The Betaworks company list includes: microblogging service Tumblr, location service Outside.in, conversational search service Summize (recently acquired by Twitter) and casual games site iminlikewithyou.

Alright, now back to bit.ly. Bit.ly is a URL shortener. What that means is that if you want to share a long URL in an email, it can create a nice short one that doesn’t break onto multiple lines, etc. That’s the basic concept for all URL shortener tools. The idea for bit.ly came from another project the Betaworks team was working on. They needed a URL shortener for Twitabit and the current 70+ shorteners didn’t fit the bill.

In my chat with Betaworks executives Andy Weissman and John Borthwick, they called bit.ly the “professional” URL shortener. There’s statistics, an archive, page thumbnails, and a platform and API which is open to all third parties. The real key they say is in the API and the ability to process pages for “entities”. Entities are bits of content on the page that bit.ly can extract and display them to help find other content that matches one of the entities you select.

Currently they use Amazon Simple Database for the database functions but are in the process of moving to MySQL. They also use Amazon’s S3 storage option for the site thumbnails. There have been 40,000 bit.ly URLs created so far with 5,000 added everyday. They are a Mac shop and here’s bit.ly lead developer Nathan Folkman cranking out code:

Betaworks is now an investor in Twitter after the Summize acquisition. I was curious to find out if they planned to push Twitter to move away from TinyURL and instead use bit.ly as their primary URL shortening service. John replied with a “no comment” but noted that they want to earn respect as the best URL shortener first. Here’s my bet… the switch over will take place by the end of 2008.

Lastly we spoke about the bit.ly business plan. While they wouldn’t share any specifics yet, the model is centered around data, data usage and there will also be a set of premium upgrades available for publishers and companies using the bit.ly service.

The bit.ly team is currently working on a sign-in option which will allow vanity URL’s to be changed. They are also working on continuing to improve the API and on datastream access.

Can a URL shortener become a real business? I guess we will see as bit.ly moves forward on their product roadmap.

check out our new article about what we learned from being dugg »

I get asked a lot about clean URLs. Most times the question is, “Why should I use clean URLs when building my web app?” And so, with that, I give you the CenterNetworks Top 3 Reasons to use clean URLs when building your web app:

Reason 1: Virality

When you see someone in the street and want to give them a URL inside your site, would you say something like (click the audio for real world example):

• reviews.cnet.com/4531-10921_7-6648315.html?tag=cnetfd.mt
  
• cnet.com/firefox0dayhoax
  

I am pretty sure it is the latter. It is important that people can speak your URLs where ever possible. Of course it is important to remember that this list is appropriate for those starting out. When you look at a site like CNET that has been around for years, changing their URL structure would be very difficult.

I use the MOM test when creating URLs…. if my mother understands the URL then I go with it.

Reason 2: Optimization

Search engines like clean URLs. And we all know how important good search engine rankings are. But you will see I did not call reason #2 – search engine optimization. And why? Because optimization of a web site (or its URLs) is more than just for SEO purposes. There are many social bookmarking sites today that only let you save the URL and a description. Wouldn’t it be nice if the description was in the URL?

Reason 3: Show Off Your Dopeness

When you use clean URLs you say to the rest of the web apps world, “we know wtf we are doing.” Otherwise you could be considered just another geek with a site. Why not be considered cool? Why not be considered dope? Well use clean URLs and you can! And there are no Surgeon General’s warnings on the package! Imagine for a second… a T-Shirt that says “got clean URLs?” Would be the hit of the Web 2.0 meetups!

Conclusion

The bottom line is that today it is very easy to create clean URLs. Every web server software can handle them and they help big time. Whether you use Drupal, Joomla, WordPress, Moveable Type or create your own application, clean URLs have never been easier to use!

One important note – PLAN YOUR URL STRUCTURE – whether you use clean or dynamic – it is imporant to create a structure that will work today and in the future. What you don’t want is to run out of usable URLs in the first year of business. Create a plan and reap the rewards.