Comments for

Bit.ly Scores a Shorter & Better URL

2009-09-04T15:36:59Z

URL shortener and social media analytics service Bit.ly just announced the availability of a new domain for shortening URLs, J.mp. J.mp offers all the same features Bit.ly does, but we believe it has two advantages.

Not only is it shorter, the new name is more literally communicative of what the service does. Click on it and you will J.mp [jump] to a new link. It's nice and literal like the old classic tinyURL, though most people don't know what URLs are. J.mp is so friendly it makes Bit.ly look like a way to catch a bit-delivered virus. J.mp might be the best URL shortener name yet. How do those Bit.ly guys do it?

]]> J.mp was first discovered by Dan Frommer at Business Insider hours before the official announcement and the announcement was retweeted by super news-hunter Atul Arora in under 3 minutes after it went live. Now we've given it just a few moments' thought and posted this account less than 15 minutes after the news was official - the Bit.ly blog displays the age of its posts in minutes.

Such is the nature of the super-fast, perhaps Real Time, social web that Bit.ly is a big part of.

You can visit J.mp and get all the same bookmarklets and tools for the new URL that you've got for Bit.ly (the "sidebar" tool is excellent). We expect that leading Twitter clients like Tweetdeck and Seesmic will likely add J.mp support soon. We wonder if Twitter.com will stop transforming long links into Bit.ly links automatically (a deal that was announced this Spring) and will use J.mp instead.

In case you're curious - .mp comes from the Mariana Islands, which are just South of Japan.

There are a number of efforts in the market to create community-owned URL shorteners, with features serving developers first before the interests of private owners. Most notable among them so far is Tr.im. It would be a shame if enthusiasm for such projects was lost over one fewer letter being taken up by J.mp. That said, this new URL J.mp will likely be just the latest development from a company that's building itself into a strong market leader.

Comment from AA on 2009-09-04

2009-09-04T15:56:06Z

u.nu is as same as j.mp when it comes to counting characters in URL.

Comment from Marshall Kirkpatrick on 2009-09-04

2009-09-04T16:08:34Z

But what did I Nu? That domain is short but arbitrary.

Comment from Vin on 2009-09-04

2009-09-04T16:43:56Z

I thought single letter domain names weren't allowed. Can u name any .com domains with a single letter ?

Comment from Brant Tedeschi on 2009-09-04

2009-09-04T17:16:54Z

I don't see why Bit.ly doesn't just default to using j.mp shortened URLS. Especially on Twitter.

Pretty soon they might have an identity crisis. People might wonder, are they j.mp or bit.ly?

Comment from Aaron on 2009-09-04

2009-09-04T17:39:38Z

I'm so sick of all this URL shortening nonsense. I can't wait for all this companies to go under.

URLs don't need to be 5 characters. The only reason anyone cares because of Twitter's limit so that messages can be piped through SMS, but the reality is that any phone that's capable of clicking a link is capable of more than just SMS.

URL shortening is something that should be provided by the domain of a site, not by a third party. If http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/bitly_scores_a_shorter_better_url.php is too long, you should just use http://www.readwriteweb.com/123456789

I hate that all links on Twitter, and now Facebook and others, are blind.

Comment from Ron on 2009-09-04

2009-09-04T17:54:13Z

Link shortening is a sign of the Web Apocalypse. Nothing good can come of this. NOTHING.

Please beware of reporting on link shortening services as if its good news when a new method comes out, the whole system of link shortening needs to go. The Bit.ly guys are clever and I respect them but they are exacerbating a major flaw with Twitter that is extremely dangerous and costly to everyone else.

We will all suffer in the link apocalypse. BEWARNED

Comment from James on 2009-09-04

2009-09-04T18:25:40Z

I used URL shorteners prior to Twitter -- too many email clients would slice up long URLs and too many people could not re-assemble that sliced up URL. I think the problem still exists and therefore I am happy that the service is around.

Comment from Miramon on 2009-09-04

2009-09-04T19:28:51Z

Obviously it's time to petition for a new one-character root domain whose sole function is URL redirection, and which only supports one real hostname, the root domain server itself.

So you could just have a site whose entire fully qualified name is "u" for maximum terseness.

I suppose in most fonts "i" would use fewer pixels, so it might be preferable....

Comment from Justin on 2009-09-04

2009-09-04T20:42:23Z

This morning, there was about 15 mins, that I was clicking on bitly links and it was trying to redirect to j.mp links but it wasn't working. They must have been amidst a deploy or something. It made me feel kind of helpless. Every link I was clicking on was erroring out.

Comment from Cowardly Skeptic on 2009-09-04

2009-09-05T06:48:39Z

Lovely!

They must have financed the domain purchase with all that revenue they earn.

Comment from Paula on 2009-09-05

2009-09-05T09:46:24Z

Didn’t the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority reserve all single letter and single digit domain names in the top level domains? I thought this was supposed to be a safeguard against overloading the registries?
www.Aafter.com- the new buzzword in URL shorteners!

Comment from Rex on 2009-09-05

2009-09-05T15:50:17Z

Glad you liked j.mp and remember as stated in our blog post yesterday - http://j.mp/GKOCx - j.mp and bit.ly are interchangeable - In fact, any bit.ly URL also works as a j.mp URL. - so that makes j.mp even cooler! Ok, that's my opinion at least, biased as it may be :P

Rex
Community Mgr., Bit.ly

Comment from Mainlander on 2009-09-05

2009-09-05T22:05:10Z

Have been using 3.ly for over 2 months, its great. Even a direct short cut to twitter from their mainpage once the link has been generated.

Comment from Paulo on 2009-09-06

2009-09-06T12:21:59Z

You can also try http://bind.to
I suggest the inclusion of this feature in Apache or MS IIS.

Comment from North Platte Web Design on 2009-09-06

2009-09-06T17:07:55Z

As a big promoter of Bit.ly I think it's great they have acquired a new shortener. Up until now they were one of the shortest...I wonder if tracking will be as good on it.

Comment from Nicholas on 2009-09-07

2009-09-07T15:58:33Z

I think twitter should just parse links automatically (and not count them towards the character limit) or have a "link" field. Then it could just attach a hyper linked word to the end of the tweet "Link". Problem solved, bit.ly goes under.

Comment from Katie on 2009-09-16

2009-09-16T07:41:41Z

Have had two friends comment my j.mp links don't open for them; their testing showed that Quest and OpenDNS doesn't resolve the j.mp links to the longer URLs, but the bit.ly ones work fine. Anyone else experiencing this?

Comment from tomhere on 2009-11-29

2009-11-30T00:29:04Z

What your article is terrific.
Have knowledge of new and still stay back. Always read your Blog.
Thank you very much.

Comment from J Hunter on 2010-03-04

2010-03-04T11:47:18Z

I'm not sure I fully understand your service OK the url gets shorter but can I specify the content of the shortened link?

What I want is to be able to change www.xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx.c0m
into www.productname.c0m if you can do that for me I want one!