140Char

Cli.gs, a short url service with analytics, has released stats and analysis of 10.2 million tweets and 2 million links to see which domains are most used.

Unsurprisingly Tinyurl leads the way as the default shortening service automatically provided by Twitter.

Interestingly the data scrape being analysed contains data from 8 million users – a higher number than most people have assigned to Twitter. And from that figures comes the figure that tinyurl provides 75.09% of shortened links.

The next is is.gd with 7.67% and my own favoured choice of bit.ly in third with 4.84%.

Cli.gs itself is in a creditable 10th, with 0.35%

From all links, Twitpic is the third most popular, with blip.fm and brightkite also in the top ten.

Go and see some more interesting information at the original post on the Cli.gs blog.

And there’s a huge list of shortening services on the Microblogging Tools page.

Following my previous post on the implications for Twitter of the first large scale phishing attack, I’ve seen a few interesting responses:

First up, @benbarden responded to my concerns over short urls by suggesting that people could host their own, e.g. 140char.com/link1 etc.

A pretty cool idea, and one that Ben is apparently running on a site already (I might have to beg him for a guide!). The only flaw is that a lot of people run hosted blogs, and will therefore still be at the mercy of shortening services. But for those of us paying hosting costs it’s worth considering.

Then the always friendly @mingyeow from MrTweet asked my opinions on a blog post ‘Addressing Privacy Concerns‘. Suffice to say it’s a very eloquent explanation of how and why the developers of one application are aiming to keep your accounts safe:

One of the points raised is that MrTweet will support OAuth as soon as it becomes available, although it won’t answer every security question, because, as they quite rightly say, securityand convenience are always a trade-off.

There’s some really interesting debate around the use of OAuth from both Jesse Stay on LouisGray.com, and Dave Winer.

tr.im is the latest in a fairly substantial list of services which offer to shorten your links to make them more compatible with microblogging sites like Twitter.

After all, when you’ve only got 140 characters to play with, you don’t want to be posting a lengthy website address – and even better, many of the newer services also include tracking of click-throughs. Particularly useful for marketing professionals to see whether it was their link which got traffic to their content.

tr.im works with Twitter and Indenti.ca and will automatically update your status. It tracks stats, allows comments on your urls, and your account keeps a history of your shortened urls (You can log in with your Twitter details). One of the main ways it stands out from other url shorteners is by offering to retweet popular shortened urls – bonus traffic!

Some of the other popular url shorteners are:

TinyURL is just about the grandaddy of url shortening. It does what it says on the tin, via the website or bookmarklet.

SnipURL: Shortens URLs, allows you to see how many people have clicked on them, and has useful options including showing the long url in brackets when the shortened url is copied – handy if people might mistake your url for a phishing scam etc.

Bit.ly: I started with tinyurl but switched to Bit.ly. It keeps stats for your urls, and splits them between Twitter (seperating out individual pages e.g. those clicking from twitter.com/home and twitter.com/badgergravling, and also those from 3rd party applications. Plus it records any conversations and retweets on Twitter and Friendfeed, comments, and metadata. It’s interesting that Twitterfeed (auto RSS posting to Twitter) seems to be using Bit.ly now. And most interesting is that you can set a custom term for your shortened url address – which can only be used once, so it’s yours forever if you pick a good one!

Some that I haven’t tried, and can’t in any way vouch for,  include:

Notlong:

Shorterlink

Doiop

Shorl

Shorttext

Tinypic (for images).

Zurl

Curio.us

Get-URL

and many many more. Interesting several that I’d heard of appear to have folded due to a combination of problems with hosts or spammers using their service. It’s important to make sure you check who is posting a shortened url before clicking on it, just in case – and obviously be aware if the link takes you to a site requesting any type of login information.

To see all the available url shorteners we’ve encountered, check out the Microblogging tools section.