Work

Su.pr Shrinks And Shares Your Long URLs

By Jason Fitzpatrick on July 11, 2009 at 5:00 AM

If you want more from your URL shrinker than just a shorter URL, Su.pr—from the people behind StumbleUpon—left beta this week and brought a bunch of features with it.

What would prompt you to use Su.pr over the slew of URL shorteners already floating around? In addition to basic URL shortening, Su.pr offers analytics to provide traffic data about your submitted links and every link you submit to Su.pr is added to the to the StumbleUpon database.

If you use the “post to Twitter” function you’re simultaneously shortening the URL and sharing it with the Twitter audience and the StumbleUpon audience. Whether or not you’re trying to drive traffic or just share something you think is awesome, it’s a great way to get more eyes on the site you’re sharing. Simply shortening a URL is available without an account, to take advantage of the more advanced features you’ll need to sign up for a free account.

Su.pr [via DownloadSquad]

Tagged:

Comments (AU Comments | US Comments)

  • TheOtherHalf
    July 11, 2009 at 6:12 AM
    bit.ly also has the same features mentioned, as well as a Firefox un-shortening plug in, an API, Bookmarklet and Sidebar. The traffic data shows clicks, referrals, and geographical data. http://bit.ly/

    TheOtherHalf

  • psychiccheese
    July 11, 2009 at 6:08 AM
    Not trying to single out this specic service, but what's so great about URL shorteners?
    sure, they can be used for twitter to stay within the 160 character limit, but besides that, I see no practical use for them.
    More often than not, they're used to mask the site they point to, and it's probably either spam or something I just don't want to see.

    psychiccheese

  • panoptican
    July 11, 2009 at 5:38 AM
    Keep in mind that using su.pr prepends the StumbleUpon toolbar to the webpage. Probably not so bothersome in the age of Facebook-ed URLs, but you might want to avoid using in a business context.
  • bmearns
    July 11, 2009 at 5:37 AM
    @Iain Cheyne: What's wrong with that? Obviously they just filter out ICMP ECHOs to save bandwidth and processing power. Anybody with windows firewall can do the same.
  • CnEY
    July 11, 2009 at 5:34 AM
    @Iain Cheyne: Given that the site appears to respond just fine to my HTTP requests, it may just be that they have their server ignoring ping requests. Wouldn't be the first time I've seen that done.

    CnEY

  • Iain Cheyne
    July 11, 2009 at 5:25 AM
    PING su.pr (74.201.117.232) 56(84) bytes of data. ^C --- su.pr ping statistics --- 14 packets transmitted, 0 received, 100% packet loss, time 12999ms That's a bad start.
  • wakebordr
    July 11, 2009 at 2:05 PM
    @psychiccheese: I use them so that when i send an email with a really long link in it, the link doesn't get trunkated and cut off.
  • peanut_butter
    July 11, 2009 at 1:37 PM
    @psychiccheese: You are right, especially as most modern websites and blogs use intelligent urls.

    peanut_butter

  • SenorRyan
    July 11, 2009 at 11:16 AM
    I use tinyurl for sites with weird names that i link to a lot such as an imageshack image or i use it for rickroll'd

    SenorRyan

  • JadoJodo
    July 11, 2009 at 8:25 AM
    @TheOtherHalf: Bit.ly > All
  • bobby.tables
    July 11, 2009 at 6:22 AM
    @psychiccheese: personally I like bit.ly for providing stats about the links. in a blog or social network this is quite useful information ... ok, to be honest the information is not really useful but it contributes quite good to my nerdness to care about such things.
  • ddoonie
    July 11, 2009 at 10:07 PM
    the problem with this url shortener, for me, and most others is that they are all case sensitive. The only one that I have found is u.nu that is not case sensitive. Very useful if you have to dictate the shortened url...
  • PhpMyCoder
    July 12, 2009 at 3:31 PM
    @TheOtherHalf:
    Exactly! I use bit.ly for this exact reason. So there's nothing really new there. And I personally would find it really annoying having to write a description and rate for StumbleUpon every time I shortened a URL.
  • askj113
    July 12, 2009 at 4:58 AM
    I've always liked tr.im, which has a sidebar addon and a button for instant trims for firefox. It's got tons of stats and usually four letter urls after the /, which is pretty good. Plus I prefer the actual site design to bitly.
  • askj113
    July 12, 2009 at 4:30 AM
    @SenorRyan: God, I've been rickrolled enough to make me use a url lengthener before I click on any shortened url, and if I don't recognize it, to google the site. I hate having to close the whole firefox process just because I can't get the rickroll window closed. One nice feature about chrome, in my book, is that it will let you close windows that don't want to be closed and not let them bounce around the screen
  • askj113
    July 12, 2009 at 4:28 AM
    @psychiccheese: I use 'em for sending links on facebook a lo, especially things like amazon product results which are ungodly long or often blog posts, which can get pretty long with a long title, like on lifehacker. And the stats are nice too
  • atomicrabbit
    July 13, 2009 at 3:44 AM

    whats with all these URL shrinking webpages?? I understand that people on twitter use them frequently, and I understand that this one by StumbleUpon has a couple other features, but really, they're all the same. What a waste of short domain names

    atomicrabbit

  • davehong01
    July 13, 2009 at 11:23 PM

    Not a fan of these URL shrinking web pages - they're security risks (and even web previews don't always help) - I hope they go the way of the do-do!

Post Your Comments

Got something to say? There are two ways to comment:

1. Guests

Click here to comment instantly.

2. Facebook Users

Click below to comment using your Facebook account.

We're looking for comments that are interesting, substantial or highly amusing. If your comments are excessively self-promotional, obnoxious, or even worse, boring, you will be banned from commenting. All comments are moderated.