URL shortening services

                                                                                                                                     

What are URL shortening services?

URL shortening services help you to create a short web page address.

Suppose i have to send a google map link

http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&source=s_q&hl=en&geocode=&q=india&sll=20.593684,78.96288&sspn=22.742864,39.506836&ie=UTF8&hq=&hnear=India&t=h&z=5 it’s a very long scary url but we can short this address link with URL shortening services.

After shortening this url

bit.ly: http://bit.ly/9aL4nk

tinyurl: http://tinyurl.com/22q35xa

You can also give your own aliases and you can create a more user friendly URL. Like

http://tinyurl.com/vivloc

Here is the list of 90+ url shortening service providers.

http://mashable.com/2008/01/08/url-shortening-services/

But personally i like tinyurl.com and bit.ly.

API:

bit.ly is providing free REST API’S for url shortening but if you are searching for a really simple url shortening api for your application, tinyurl is the answer.

So how to use tinyurl API

Request: http://tinyurl.com/api-create.php?url=http://freeapis.blogspot.com/2010/05/url-shortening-services.html

Response: http://tinyurl.com/36f3zv4