What is tinyurl?
Sunday 9th August 2009 by admin0
COMMENTSJust a thought based on the last post some people may have seen a tinyurl but not actually know what a tinyurl is. Here is the wikipedia description:
TinyURL is a web service that provides short aliases for redirection of long URLs. Kevin Gilbertson, a web developer, launched the service in January 2002 so that he would be able to link directly to newsgroup postings which frequently had long and cumbersome addresses.
The TinyURL homepage includes a form that’s used to submit a long URL for shortening. For each URL entered, the server adds a new alias in its hashed database and returns a short URL such as
http://tinyurl.com/2unshin the following page. If the URL has already been requested, TinyURL will return the existing alias rather than create a duplicate entry. The short URL forwards users to the long URL.TinyURL also offers an API that allows applications to automatically create short URLs.[1]
Short URL aliases are seen as useful because they are easier to write down, remember or pass around, are less error-prone to write, and also fit where space is limited such as IRC channel topics, email signatures, microblogs, certain printed newspapers (such as the .net Magazine or even Nature), and email clients that impose line breaks on messages at a certain length. People posting on Twitter make extensive use of shortened URLs to keep their tweets within the service-imposed 140 character limit.
Starting in 2008, TinyURL allows users to create custom, more meaningful aliases. This means that a user can create descriptive URLs rather than a randomly generated address. For example,
http://tinyurl.com/wp-tinyurl.
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TinyURL is a revolutionary web service that was created especially to help bloggers post their blogs on social networking sites. Its API feature is really useful. However, nowadays a lot of URL shortening service providers such as bit.ly, Su.pr and aafter.com are available on the web, but when URL shorteners are considered, TinyURL comes the first.
Pam