Welcome to the wonderful world of URL shorteners, where internet links hide behind abridged monikers to sheath their unwieldy length. You may have seen them fluttering about on the Internet; they’re currently infesting Twitter feeds, blog posts, Facebook status updates, and yes, even in print publications.Long winded web addresses, with tracking codes and web stats, have become so passé. Linking to one will make you seem like a Jurassic entity, which is why URL shorteners have shot up in popularity. The first of these services, TinyURL began rapidly proliferating when social networking and blogging stormed the web scene. Users everywhere needed a simple way to share their favorite links and ensure that their web friends and followers had an accessible way to navigate their content. With the advent of microblogging sites where every character counts, more of these services have emerged to become an essential part of internet life.

Are URL Shorteners Detrimental to the Internet?

The important thing to remember about the Internet is that it sometimes works in overtime. URL Shorteners, while accommodating, can sometimes clash with the synergy of servers working together. Here’s why: URL shortening services automatically add another layer of indirection to the primary URL you are accessing. A regular hyperlink already has three entities to interact with: the DNS resolver, the publisher’s DNS server and the publisher’s website. With a shortening service, you’re adding another layer of stats that act like a fourth entity the link must interact with. But these are not the only parties that are affected by URL shorteners; the publisher of the site, the place where the shortened link is used and the user who clicks the link is impaired in some way by all of this rerouting.

That’s not to say that URL shorteners are all entirely abad thing. After all, they make link sharing on Twitter a cinch and offer helpful services like traffic statistics. However, this is something to keep in mind when you’re shortening links. We take a look five popular URL shorteners, evaluate the merits and shortcomings of each, and ponder on the future of this link shrinking technology.

Bit.Ly

The Dame Judi Dench of a URL shortening services offers more than just shortening -- registered users get access to sharing and tracking features. Users can also view complete, real-time traffic and referrer data for each link, as well as location and meta data. You can also access a complete history of every bit.ly link you’ve ever created, as well as see how the links have grown overtime. Though this is all a packaged deal, you may forget to log in when you shorten a link, therefore losing your right to track stats, but at least you don’t have to use an email address to register. Bit.ly is already integrated into many third-party Twitter applications, such as Tweetdeck, and is the official URL shortener for Twitter.

Snipurl.com

Snipurl is an address web shortener that allows you to modify the URL once you’ve shortened it, which comes in handy if the link changes but the hyperlink is already posted somewhere that cannot be edited — like a magazine, for instance. Like Bit.ly, you can also create a user account and track your stats and web links, but also browse the “snips” of other users. Snipurl also allows you to use a different variation of the URL shortener, as well enter a private code to keep the masses from peeping in on your links.

Is.gd

If you take a quick glance at the link, you might read it as “Is Good.” Well, in its credit, Is.gd does work efficiently as a URL shortener, since it manages to condense the link to the fewest characters possible (one character fewer than Bit.ly!) without having it completely disappear into thin air. Is.gd also lowers the character count when texting web addresses to a mobile phone and hides the real URLs of affiliate links from visitors to your site, as well as obscures your real email address from bots so that you aren’t spammed.

If your blog or Twitter feed followers are wary of hidden links, you can also enable the link to display a preview when they hover over it, though this function is heavily dependent on user’s Cookies settings. Is.gd does not have a tracking functionality, but it keeps your links as short as possible if you’re trying to squeeze out as many characters as you possibly can in a Twitter feed.