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64 Comments
- shakabrah, on 03/31/2009, -1/+66and what about http://www.hugeurl.com/ ?
- dvsbastard, on 03/31/2009, -2/+63And Twitter is still worth nothing...
- inactive, on 03/31/2009, -1/+37Digg is Worth At Least $100T
In a world gone mad... - treelovinhippie, on 03/31/2009, -0/+26I don't get how an URL shortening service can be worth this frickin much. You can find a dozen free scripts online that do the exact same thing. And apart from the brand-recognition of the name being plastered all over Twitter... I don't see any value in it, nor any business model capable of earning the $2mil + wanted investor returns. I guess there are still some investing in web 2.0 (even though this is a 1.0 app) ideas with zero business model. Ridiculous.
- IamNomad, on 03/31/2009, -0/+14less then tinyurl. your kidneys dont get nearly as much traffic.
- ylikone, on 03/31/2009, -1/+13I wonder if my personal tinyurl clone site is worth anything... http://qwzr.com
(probably not, as nobody ever uses it except me, lol) - crazyjake, on 03/31/2009, -0/+10how much will one of my kidneys go for?
- dlan4327, on 03/31/2009, -0/+10That a huge ass comment right there.
- zyklon, on 03/31/2009, -0/+10Meh it's ad space that generates money for places like Myspace and Facebook. You'd be surprised how much money someone would pay for a fullscreen ad on the front of Myspace.com
- marcoionox, on 03/31/2009, -1/+10The question remains: Will Google buy it?
- bigpun, on 03/31/2009, -0/+8I like how spammers cater for everyone, no matter which language you speak.
- dazparkour, on 03/31/2009, -0/+7Digg links are no follow.
Thanks for playing. - embryoinbloom, on 03/31/2009, -0/+7That was a little much dickface.
- dazparkour, on 03/31/2009, -0/+6Rick roll:http://www.hugeurl.com/?YTdjODI1MTBlMWQ1YTljYzBiYz ...
Edit: No good, it gets cut off. - markr, on 03/31/2009, -0/+6I've wondered for a while what will we do when tinyurl goes out of business - all of these twitters won't make any sense anymore!
What we need is a compression method for URLs which we can uncompress ourselves. My first try is a complete failure - but may qualify as on the way to being a competitor to hugeurl.com:
#!/usr/bin/env python
import base64
import zlib
def to_tiny(url):
compressed_url=zlib.compress(url)
print base64.urlsafe_b64encode(compressed_url)
to_tiny("www.google.com")
This compresses "www.google.com" to 32 characters - from 14 characters - an impressive 230% inflation rate!
There must be a way to optimize URL compression though... - theOster, on 03/31/2009, -0/+6no good! it's full of steam!
- IAmTheGuy, on 03/31/2009, -0/+6Did we learn nothing from the Dot Com boom and bust of the late 90s?
- seanieb, on 03/31/2009, -0/+4Techcrunch are full of *****. Period.
- masterc, on 03/31/2009, -0/+4You're not on twitter. You can spell out something.
- marnaq, on 03/31/2009, -0/+4over $9000M
- xdvx, on 03/31/2009, -2/+6Why Twitter have chosen TinyURL as default short-url service? Do they have some deal or sth?
- alexkball, on 03/31/2009, -0/+4Too long. Did not read.
- RJ0534, on 03/31/2009, -0/+4i'll start using it to increase the value... if you give me a cut of its worth :)
- johnhok, on 03/31/2009, -0/+4*ziiiing*
- xcrex, on 03/31/2009, -2/+6Buried for mentioning Twitter as the main reason to use these services.
- DiggrDick, on 03/31/2009, -0/+3that website is back to front
- ilgaz, on 03/31/2009, -0/+3tinyurl was there even before the real young digg community was born. It is brand recognition. Everyone has used tinyurl somehow, not just new twitter fashion. Even newspapers made use of it to print ridiculously looking long URLs. I have "TinyURL!" scriptlet in my Safari toolbar for instance.
- markr, on 03/31/2009, -0/+3I like the t-shirt shop link on the right: "Hey! I sold one! If you see a guy in Australia wearing a HugeURL shirt, tell him how much he rocks. "
- TheUngod, on 03/31/2009, -0/+3No no, you just made that up. You have to consult "the chart" first.
- theOster, on 03/31/2009, -2/+4the what in the what?
- sfrench, on 03/31/2009, -0/+2I think you have the best way to compress strings. Which is to say compress->encode. The real trick becomes how much can you compress a string, which unfortunately, I don't think you are ever going to get down to anything remotely resembling what the shortening services are doing, especially once you start dealing with url's that don't compress as well.
But the way pretty much every url shortening service works is on some sort of sequential integer with the associated content stored in a database somewhere, which allows for tight packing, and thus "tiny" urls.
1 = google.com => base64(1) = 1
2 = yahoo.com => base64(2) = 2
etc. - DiggrDick, on 03/31/2009, -2/+4well blog racks in at ZIM$563M
- markr, on 03/31/2009, -0/+2Another thing on this is that you can encode images in data URLs (http://www.websiteoptimization.com/speed/tweak/inl ... - and tiny URL allows you to shorten this data - http://tinyurl.com/5m8npt - for example...
So what is the largest URL that tinyURL will encode? Could I back up my disk to a tiny URL?! - spinchange, on 03/31/2009, -0/+2"The data each service is collecting might be valuable and could be packaged in various ways to brand marketers or other corporate buyers"
This is the USP/ Model behind bit.ly as reported in just about every release/ publication that covered the announcement. It's mentioned here as an afterthought at the very end of the post (?) Additionally, does anyone remember the concept of first *right* mover, advantage? - Lawlmuffin, on 03/31/2009, -0/+2What about 4chan?
- umbrae, on 04/01/2009, -0/+2Smaz might be a start toward what you're looking for:
http://github.com/antirez/smaz/tree/master
Still not as good as a bit.ly URL, but hey, it's something. - rath01, on 03/31/2009, -0/+2http://qikr.com has got to be worth more than bit.ly. tinyurl was just one of the first, hence the ugly site.
- Eminemdrdre00, on 03/31/2009, -0/+1Interesting
- ilgaz, on 03/31/2009, -1/+2tinyurl could make money right now by letting you choose the "tiny" part of URL. E.g. "check here for that paper, http://tinyurl.com/ibm0001 " , for that you (IBM) would pay $5 or something.
wonder why they don't make use of their popularity.
and tinyurl , coolwhois , ihateclowns are really old sites. I am so glad that their free service they (he) keeps up for years which really has to teach something about reliability has paid itself off, in a strange way. - MentalBeaver, on 03/31/2009, -1/+2I don't trust shortened URLs. Too many Rick Roll and porn redirection opportunities.
- ilgaz, on 03/31/2009, -0/+11)ads are already in "posting", perhaps preview top bar can use some google text ad.
2)Charge for custom tiny urls like my example> tinyurl.com/ibm0001
3)Not selling user data but selling the anonymous popularity data could make some money, especially from news sites. - 0crabby0, on 03/31/2009, -0/+1Sidedeal...lol
- AbelZhu, on 03/31/2009, -0/+1Facebook was valued at $30,000,000,000+ ... but by Microsoft. hmm.
- adulion, on 03/31/2009, -0/+1deceptive spamming at its best :P
- ilgaz, on 03/31/2009, -0/+1In dotcom boom days, you logged on to your favorite site and see it was acquired by some capital company for $2 BILLION and you called it "Wow, so our site was cheap". That small time site was also running on Sun Enterprise servers running Netscape Enterprise server. People didn't even look at smaller offerings.
Some people don't know/remember the crazy days it seems. - pinkbob, on 03/31/2009, -0/+1http://.com is worth 100T. (It's the shortest)
- marnaq, on 03/31/2009, -0/+1How would one make money on a such service?
* Ads? Where?
* Charge? For what?
* Selling user data? What kind of data? URLs? - alexkball, on 03/31/2009, -0/+1I have no idea, I'm only commenting on how ridiculously overvalued small little websites like these were back in the late 90s and early 2000s.
- piieerrrree, on 03/31/2009, -0/+1WHAT? $9000(M)?!!
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