Yet there are some tiny nooks and crannies around the web where space is at a premium, and there are times when being conservative with what you do online is necessary. For example, throwing a long URL into a Twitter or Facebook post can take up important space, forcing readers to look at unnecessarily long addresses and stealing precious characters you may not be able to afford. As such, using URL shorteners to condense obtrusively long addresses into smaller, more compact ones can allow you to use that space more intelligently.

There are many different URL shorteners out there, and understanding the benefits and drawbacks of each can help you choose particular tools for particular projects. This article considers a brief few and helps you distinguish between the advantages of each.

As always, Google has worked its way into the mix and offers a very simple URL shortener called goo.gl. It is absolutely bare-bones, and you certainly cannot get confused using its interface. Plug your long URL in the left and out pops a short one to the right. A history of the addresses you have shortened appears below the engine as you proceed.

Users may not be satisfied with the obscure, often unhelpful URLs such engines put out for us. After all, we are trying to change these addresses into little units that better suit our needs, so why shouldn’t we have some say in what they come out as? Enter doiop.com, a URL shortener that allows you to personalize the end of the URL for identification purposes. For example, if I want to point to a Ghacks article, I can include the term Ghacks in the URL.

Just like that, doiop.com/ghacks1 now points directly to an earlier post about face recognition software. This is one shortener that can be a big help if you want to leave viewers with a hint as to what is at the other end of the link.
Unfortunately, some of the URL shorteners that were most valuable to users have disappeared completely. DwarfURL was one such engine, which allowed you to keep stats on the links you created free of charge. There is one nifty little shortener that has stuck around – Memurl. This website allows you to plug in a long address and receive a short one, just like the others. Memurl, however, provides links that are easier to remember because they are mnemonic, making them easy to pronounce and easier to remember.

Other url shortening services offer similar options. Tinyurl for instance generates a random url by default, but offers options to pick a custom string instead for the shortened url. Several additional aspects are worth mentioning. Some services, like Tinyurl, offer preview pages for shortened urls which can be used to preview the page they link to.

Other services, like cli.gs offer statistics for the link creator. Stats usually require an account though, which some users might not want to create for that purpose. Lastly, some services like McAfee’s url shortener offer security checks of landing pages. They will warn the user if a page has been detected as malicious or otherwise harmful.

There are many different ways to shorten URLs for many different purposes. Finding the right one for your needs is the tricky part.

The main problem of these services is that the user cannot identify the destination of the url just by looking at its shortened version. This is for instance exploited by users with malicious intents to lure Internet users on websites that they would not otherwise visit.

Untiny is a service that can display the final destination of dozens of url shortening services. This is in particular interesting since the developers have produced a variety of tools to use their service. Tools offered range from a web form on their website over browser plugins to userscripts and bookmarklets.

The tool collection is listed on the extra page of the Unity website. Each tool is linked from that page.

Untiny is for instance available as a Firefox add-on, Google Chrome extension, Opera widget, bookmarklet or Greasemonkey userscript.

The userscript will for instance convert all urls from supported url shortening services into the link destination so that the real destination is shown on the website. Works perfectly fine on Twitter to increase the security on the Internet.

The wide range of tools for all popular browsers and other programs makes Untiny one of the best solutions to reveal shortened url destinations.

Update: The add-on has been discontinued. A solid alternative is the Firefox add-on Long URL please.

The service is just a URL shortening service, but one I love to use because no one dares to click the link. I often post non-RR content in one of these, but I feel I have used the power of Astley to trick them nonetheless.

Rick Roll It! is mainly just a piece of fun but is fast and very user-friendly. Unfortunately, features such as ‘previews’ which TinyURL has are not available with rickroll.it.

This site is obviously primarily a tool for mischief.

A way to boost the Schadenfreude achieved through rickrolling someone, though, is to con someone into actually clicking a rickroll.it link, which leads to a rickroll. Like this one.

So, how many people can trick a friend with this one?

If you head over to Twitter and log into your account you most likely will see links of shortening services. While they make links shorter so that you can save chars they also hide the real address of the link which in its extreme could be used to lure users to a website they do not want to visit. This can have serious consequences depending on the location or place the links are accessed: Think of following a link leading to an adult site at work.

Long URL Please is a experimental Firefox extension that turns urls of shortening services to their original one. It currently supports about 30 different services with more being added regularly.

The developers have created a bookmarklet as well which can be used if you work with other web browsers. Some users have claimed that the extension dropped the performance while surfing while others have not experienced it. It might depend on the speed of the computer and Internet connection.

Tiny Url are offering a preview function on their website which can be enabled. If you do enable it a cookie will be set and you will be redirected to a preview page displaying the real destination of the link that you clicked on. This is working for as long as the cookie is set.

There is however a better solution if you are using Firefox. The Greasemonkey script TinyURL Decoder decodes urls that have been shortened with the Tinyurl service right away on the page. No clicking, no hovering with the mouse over the link, it is decoded and instantly available.

Even better, TinyUrl Decoder is not only compatible with the service of the same name, but with dozens of other url shortening services. At the time of writing, a total of 68 minus a few not working ones are supported by the Greasemonkey script.

The script works only under the Firefox web browser, and not under Google Chrome. Here is what you need to do to install the script for Firefox.

Start by installing the Greasemonkey add-on or the Scriptish alternative.

Once done visit the website of the userscript and click the install button there. You will see a popup message which you need to accept. This message details the access rights that you are giving the script. Once installed, it will work out of the box. It is best tested on the userscript page. Make sure you reload the page once to see the script in action.