By now, you’ve probably heard of TinyURL, or at least seen it in use. Several other similar services have since popped up, touting various improvements (or not).
My new favorite is SnipURL. Why? Because it lets you give a nickname of 5-20 characters, making it much more user-friendly than TinyURLs, and allowing you to support some branding in the process.
So, for example:
https://www.thevirtualhandshake.com/2004/05/03/itsnotwhatyouknow-reborn-as-knowmentum
becomes
http://snipurl.com/KnowmentumLaunch
https://www.thevirtualhandshake.com/linkedin-teleclass.php
becomes
http://snipurl.com/LinkedInTeleclass
https://www.thevirtualhandshake.com/online-social-networks-guide
becomes
http://snipurl.com/SocialNetworks
Even better, if you register (do so before you make your URLs — you can’t claim them later), it keeps a record of all your snips, how many times they’ve been visited, etc.
UPDATE: You can claim them later — you just have to write to customer service. I had mine within a few hours. Still, best to just register in the first place.
This is VERY cool — fraught with potential for abuse, which I hope doesn’t happen, but extremely useful for those willing to use it responsibly. They do investigate spam complaints and delete the SnipURLs if they find out it’s spam.
This is a great tool for bloggers to refer to particular favorite posts in e-mails, discussion boards, etc.
