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Url Shortener on Diet

Page history last edited by Eric Koh 12 years, 10 months ago

Description:

 

There are many URL shorteners around, such as bit.ly and goo.gl

They are commonly used in tweets for shortening long URLs to help meet the 140 character limit.

Normally, the shorteners will try to minimise the character count of the shortened URL (by using a short domain name etc).

I propose we create a URL shortener that creates the slimmest URL.

 

Eg.

http://fb.me/MAomiBek vs.

http://li.li/lij1fji1

 

Both the above URLs uses the same number of characters but the second is a lot slimmer than the first.

 

But Why...?  

Screen real estate is very precious, especially on the mobile.

A slim URL would use less space to display, which means more pixels are available for showing actual content.

 

Ok but seriously, there are some other points to this

1) This is a simple but fun project that can be hacked in a few hours

2) We can try using unicode characters (I'm sure there are a lot of slim unicode chars around). This will be slightly more challenging for the coder, and we'll see if these unicode URLs work out there (good websites should handle these properly).

3) Better click rates? Imagine seeing this link on your twitter timeline -> http://li.li/¡Íî¹Ïì¦ This shit clicks itself...

4) Once the project is up, we will try to create a PR story around it to get as much coverage as possible. Thus there can be a concrete KPI for this project (visits, usage etc). Being able to create a buzz for a startup is an important factor.

 

 

People Involved:

  • @erickohsg (Idea guy, coder if necessary)
  • any interested developer or social media marketer/PR
  • Interested in hacking it up?  [please add your name below]

Comments (6)

Vinnie Lauria said

at 4:34 pm on May 9, 2011

loving it.

Rif Chia said

at 8:42 pm on May 13, 2011

Good idea. I am help in development. Discuss tmr.

yink said

at 3:16 pm on May 14, 2011

anyone working on this at shdh?

Rif Chia said

at 4:32 pm on May 14, 2011

I am working on this.

Rif Chia said

at 5:14 pm on May 14, 2011

Url on diet is completed: http://i.roound.com/convert.php

Eric Koh said

at 5:52 pm on May 14, 2011

Haha Rif, you are very fast as usual. I found that unicode linsks may not work well on twitter. Try slim ascii chars like ijlft!,.;:[]

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