Is Snipr better than TinyURL for making long URLs short?

Posted on: December 20, 2007

I've been using TinyURL for awhile, and it's a good companion to SLURL, since Second Life URLs can get so very loooong. I tend to run my SLURLs through a Firefox toolbar tool so the newly-tiny URLs can be copied-and-pasted for brevity — this is especially important for emails, where line breaks mangle lengthy addresses.

Recently, I found out about Snipr (also known through several other names like the slightly longer "Snipurl"), and appreciate that I can create a custom, memorable nickname instead of relying on a cryptic jumble of letters & numbers, no matter how short. (Looks like they've been around since 2000, so I'm surprised I didn't hear of them earlier.)

Snipr _ Snipurl 2.0 _ Snurl - Snippetty snip snip with your looong URLs!

Another plus about Snipr is you can take a few seconds to setup an account and manage your "snips"; especially useful if you have several (or more) shortened URLs you refer to frequently. For example, this morning, I created http://snipr.com/torley, which redirects to a SLURL to Watermelinden Land in Second Life.

Even better, you can change where a Snipr-condensed URL points to: I made several changes to my SLURL description which changed the URL, and no problem, I pasted in the long URL, pressed "Snip it!", and http://snipr.com/torley now redirected to the new address. Very convenient, prevent broken links, and TinyURL doesn't offer such a service.

On the minus side for Snipr, TinyURL does have a Preview Feature that lets you see the actual URL before you go there, avoiding sneaky redirects.

I remember a long time ago, when TORLEY.COM was known as http://listen.to/t (it still redirects here with the old title, and an ad banner on top :p), and it was a lot clunkier and inconvenient to setup something so simple as a redirect.

I'll keep using Snipr, but so far, after looking at other alternatives like dwarfURL (which offers clickthrough stats — [UPDATE @ 2007-12-31] I discovered Snipr has even nicer stats!), I prefer Snipr the most.

Do you use URL shortening service(s), and if so, which one's your favorite?

6 Responses to “Is Snipr better than TinyURL for making long URLs short?”

  1. Opensource Obscure Says:
    December 20th, 2007 at 8:18 PM PST

    Thanks Torley for this tip!

    I often use http://t-r.cc - especially on Twitter where a few characters sometimes really matter :-)

    Is there any way to shorten secondlife:// addresses? It would be useful for SL residents, but they are usually filtered by URL shortening services for security reasons.

    Tip:
    you can offer instant teleport to a whole group using the chat with an address like secondlife://app/teleport/Vulcano/85/137/31

  2. Crissa Says:
    December 21st, 2007 at 5:47 AM PST

    Howcome more people don't use the secondlife:// format tags instead of SLURL? SLURLs are okay for events or small shops, but terrible for when you actually want to go somewhere.

  3. Dedric Mauriac Says:
    December 21st, 2007 at 9:59 PM PST

    Slurls are great because people who don't have SL can follow the link and see something meaningful. I imagine they are more search-engine friendly. I also paste slurls in my chat window often and click through since vista constantly asks me if i want to run a program through the web page.

    I can't wait for the day when you click a slurl and you'll see an embedded control showing a 3-D version of a live view of buildings and people in the location you are about to go to. It would make for a great way to preview before you go so you know what you are about to get yourself into.

  4. Snipr « Bits of Gadgets and Stuff Says:
    December 21st, 2007 at 11:33 PM PST

    [...] clipped from torley.com [...]

  5. Yoz Says:
    January 2nd, 2008 at 10:47 AM PST

    I like xrl.us - short and sweet, has a handy bookmarklet.

  6. Torley Says:
    January 6th, 2008 at 8:10 AM PST

    @Opensource: I'll check out t-r.cc … what a unique URL. I don't know how to shorten "secondlife://" addresses outside of a usual URL shortening service working, but sometimes I know they only accept "http://".

    @Dedric, thanks for helping Crissa — that's indeed the big reason — and hopefully that clarifies things. A lot of people out there still don't have Second Life and it's nice to introduce them. If you use a SLURL inworld, nice thing is it opens the World Map to that location.

    @Yoz: Wikkid, and great to see ya here! I shall check it out.

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