The sudden shutdown of popular URL shortener tr.im was already covered by the main tech blogs so we won't go into further details on the business side. In short the main problem resulting from this are the broken links someday and there's only one solution how you can prevent this in the future: run your own URL shortener.
Again, it all comes down to owning your namespace as discussed earlier with Facebook's username landrush. You are only able to fully control what's happening with your links if you own the domain name and run your own URL shortener on it. Anybody who's considering Twitter as an important part of their business or personal brand should start thinking about customising their short URLs now (also see our domain hack examples how they are used to create short links).
We have compiled a list of hosted services, scripts and plugins that make running your custom URL shortener possible:
Hosted URL shortening services with custom domain
- awe.sm - A custom URL shortener with API. detailed analytics, uptime guarantee and SLAs. According to their website you can take your data with you anytime.
- Tinyarro.ws - Use a custom domain with Tinyarro.ws' tiny links service. As their own service uses the ➡.ws domain you should also be able to use IDNs.
- budurl - The budurl Enterprise edition offer the possibility to use your own domain. Their dashboard provides extensive analytics and real-time stats.
- XR.COM - This free service is a basic URL shortening tool. If you don't need analytics and just want to shorten links XR.COM might be the right choice.
- Google Short Links - Google runs a URL shortener as part of Google Apps For Your Domain. It's a Labs feature but can simply be added to your dashboard.
- Peashoot - Manage social media campaigns with your own short URLs. If you want to grow your audience and haven't yet heard of Peashoot you've missed a great app.
- su.pr - StumbleUpon's own URL shortener drives traffic to your site can be used with a custom domain too. You need to install a small script or use Wordpress though.
Run a URL shortener on your own machine
- YOURLS PHP script - Small set of script to shorten links using a classic PHP and MySQL setup. Also offers an API and a Wordpress plugin.
- Short URL Wordpress Plugin - Create short URLs with this Wordpress plugin. Offers basic analytics and requires Wordpress 2.5 or higher.
- Movable Type script - Paul Roub's script to create a self-hosted URL shortener for the Movable Type blog software. You need some technical knowledge for this.
Other resources
If you don't have a short domain you should check out our list of ultra short and brandable domain names.
Hello also there is Hasan Özgan's Open Source kissa.be application. You can reach it at it's home page http://kissa.be
The thing is, URL shorteners are dead easy to write. I threw together one in a couple of days in Python, it really isn't difficult even with rudimentary programming experience.
There is also urlShort, an open source URL shortener for your own domain:
http://urlshort.sourceforge.net/download/
Please add urlborg.com to the URL shorteners that allow you to have your own namespace (http://urlborg.com/a/urlborg_xml/ )
Once you set up your own domain, it will force all short URLs pointing to your "long" domain to use it.
For those that prefer building a URL shortener for your own site from scratch, I recently posted a tutorial on how to do so:
http://sean-o.com/short-URL
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