Shortest url shortener

[samarudge]

Are URL shorteners still relevant? I think the only real usage for them was Twitter, and since t.co all links take up 20 characters regardless of the length of the original link (Even if it's shorter).

The other use would be advertising, but doing sensible on-domain links like ourcompany.com/product are much better and easier to remember than bit.ly/aZq14

[dools]

I think it's tying for shortest - bit.ly will allow you to create j.mp URLs via their API (not sure if you can do it without the API)

[Tichy]

Although j.mp frequently doesn't work. Clicking the j.mp links often fails, at least on my computer.

[sjs382]

You can just replace any "bit.ly" with "j.mp" and the url should work.

[laacz]

Haven't seen SSI around much lately. Going to link http://l.md/bfx+ outputs this: http://laacz.lv/f/img/ssi.png

[keymone]

[0-9a-z] - base 36 is far from shortest shortener

縮.jp - this one uses utf8 characters and that means their urls won't break 6 characters length for a long long time

[ryanbraganza]

it's no shorter than http://tinyarro.ws or plenty of others...

e.g. http://➡.ws/1wz

[nodata]

Not going to work: is that an L (Lima), an I (India) or a 1 (one)?

[dools]

Urr how often do you read out shortened URLs? The entire genesis of link shortening is sending them in txt communications to be clicked on (emails initially when tinyurl.com was invented and later bit.ly when twitter placed even tighter constraints on character count).

[Altfel]

That's an L

[webreac]

url shortener are bad: they are obfuscating the real link. I delete all the mails containing shortened url. The only exception I can see is for twitter.

[delan]

URL shorteners have a purpose, and while they may be misused, there is no reason to say that they are just simply "bad".

[Toshio]

How do you get the entire text automatically selected afterwards? A code snippet would be helpful.