tinyarro.ws - Shortest URLs on Earth

June 11, 2009 4:58 PM

tinyarro.ws - Shortest URLs on Earth
Using the magic of Unicode and international domains, TinyArrows provides the shortest URL shrinking possible. All with stats and cute symbol domains and everything. In addition, we just started a pay service where you can roll your own domain as a URL shrinker, too, with pretty easy steps for getting setup.

Twitter users have been enjoying it so far, since the URLs are particularly odd. For example: http://➡.ws/ፃ䥯

Let us know what you think!

posted by Rezand (8 comments total)

This project was posted to MetaFilter by filthy light thief on June 15, 2009: Taking URL Shortening Further

I've been using this now for a while and I totally love it! People generally don't think the URLs are real, then I'm like "no, seriously, just click on that" and voila. Magic.
Seriously well done; glad to know yall are on MeFi.
posted by stvspl at 9:11 PM on June 11

Really neat concept, though I know the OCD in me will seethe at the incongruity of random unicode characters in the middle of a body of text. Then again, I voted for it, so there ya go.
posted by Phire at 7:25 AM on June 12

Hooray! Adorable unicode characters are my favorite things. ๏̯͡๏﴿
posted by Juliet Banana at 11:21 AM on June 12

So, when you click no more previews, is that just for you? Because I'm never going to send anyone a link that requires them to sit through 10 seconds of bland advertisement.

I just had a friend try it out and he reported that it counts down through 10.

Am I doing something wrong, or what purpose does the countdown have? I'm not trying to be a jerk. Let's call it curiosity mixed with constructive criticism.
posted by Juliet Banana at 11:38 AM on June 12

Thanks for all the great comments. It's a fun project, definitely.

Regarding, the previews, I'll quote (with tweaks) from our FAQ:

Q: What are those preview/countdown pages when I click on a link?

We're strong believers in the idea of informed consent. So before people are rick-rolled or are sent to a viagra ad, we want them to know where they're going. As such, by default, all visitors are given the option to see a countdown before being redirected through an anonymous URL. This means they don't have to track down some special URL in order to see a preview of where they're going (like you would with tinyurl.com).

The people who click on the link can click on "Never show this preview again" and the preview will never be shown. We had to give those users a fighting chance, though.

Note that the preview is not shown to search engines, so those search crawlers are sent directly to the site you target. Only humans see the previews as a courtesy to the clicker.

Q: How do I disable the previews for my links?

Quite easy, actually. Just sign up-- the previews aren't shown for registered users. You'll need to refresh your bookmarklets, though, so they will include your userid.

Note that spammers risk having their account disabled if they abuse this. (We really dislike spam.)
posted by Rezand at 12:17 PM on June 12

This is awesome, if a bit silly. I wonder if for many people this will be their first exposure to usable IDNs? My friend Rich Chen just registered http://www.➡.ws/角煮, which I'm guessing is his name in Chinese. Is there any easier way for a casual American to register hostnames in non-ascii?
posted by Nelson at 2:45 PM on June 12

Wonderful API. I very much like the suggest parameter. How nice to see an API that is as well thought out as the web-based functionality. I will be encoding my urls with the suggest functionality tomorrow (or right now if I decide not to sleep). I used it manually this morning / last night @ http://➡.ws/tehran.
posted by BoatMeme at 4:06 AM on June 14

URL shortening weakens the internet. If Tinyarro.ws ever goes down, all the links that people post using that service are broken.
posted by Grimp0teuthis at 1:02 PM on June 23