Big surprise. There’s another URL shortening service that wants to throw its hat in the ring and into a field that’s pretty much saturated. Do we really need another URL shortener? Brinkster, the web-hosting startup behind Br.st seems to think so.
Similar to many of its competitors, Br.st offers statistics (in your own time zone) about your links, including number of clicks, referrers, and origin (by country or region) of all of the clicks. Bit.ly, which is one of the current leaders in the URL shortening space, offers all of these analytics as well. Additionally, Br.st filters submitted links through malware filters.
Br.st’s service lets you post to over 10 social networks and sites including Twitter, Facebook, MySpace and Digg, and will soon offer Google analytics. The site also offers bookmarklets to add to your toolbar. And Br.st has opened up its API. Br.st says that it will also offer image and filer sharing (similar to yFrog or TwiPic) and will let you see detailed stats on these links.
Though full of useful features, Br.st is entering a space that’s inundated competitors and it’s a dog eat dog world out there in the URL shortening field. It seems that every week, there’s a new URL shortener out on the market. TweetMeme just debuted its own URL shortening service, ReTwet.me. Of course, one URL shortener Tr.im, has dropped out of the race. And recently, Royal Pingdom conducted a study on which URL shortener was the fastest and Ow.ly and Bit.ly came out on top.
yes we do.
Need to wait to watch how competitive this URL shortener can be. Because for every week, there’s a new URL shortener out on the market.
Nowhere near as good as t.ts
Dammit man. The timestamps are wrong. I was first.
Wait. Is it pronounced “Breast”? or “Burst”?
It’s burst.
I think maybe if your logo was something bursty- it would be rad http://www.eart...ered_Lights.jpg
If you look on our twitter.com page there is a burst in the background, does that count? See http://br.st/u3
Brist, like a circumcision. Just a guess, tho.
Makes sense. Shortening service.
breast, burst or brist…?? hmmm…..
Brist – that is hilarious and one that we had not thought of.
borscht.
If it was Breast, we could at least assume they have a business plan.
Why is TC still even reporting on these? It takes an hour to throw up a shortener, and they are all replaceable by each other. Who cares about br.st or any outside of the top 3, quit writing about these are give us some real news please.
Oh, is your startup creating awesome stuff that will make real news? FYI, there has to be real news for there to be real news.
there has to be real news for there to be real news
suitable for framing
After checking out burst, (brist breast – however its pronounced) I think that this is in the running for one of the top3 as you so elequently put it. Its super easy to use, nice stats, if they actualy do get the image and file service out there, they will be over the top.
WTF is this news?
Do any other shortner sites run their urls through a malware filter? If not, then this definately IS news
br.st filters through Google Safebrowsing when the URL is shortened, when the preview page is hit, and when the short URL is hit.
I know that other URL shorteners do some malware filtering, but I think br.st does the most frequent checks against Google Safebrowsing.
I’ve personally never liked the visual aspect of bit.ly and it looks like br.st took the time to actually make their UI visually appealing. That in itself lets me consider using it.
and i thought url shortening sites were temporary solutions for an emerging problem. copy original link>open new tab/browser>go to url shortening site:paste > hit “shorten”/br.st it/whatever> copy newly generated link > go to twitter/facebook/etc: paste>post.
time consuming and kind of dumb.
URL shorteners are increasing providing valued extra services. For example, br.st! offers detailed stats that automatically show up in your own timezone and show you location down to the country and region/state.
Many people appreciate the quick access to detailed stats that br.st! and other URL shorteners provide.
Also, br.st! runs links submitted through Google Safebrowsing to check for maleware, phishing, etc. Although this is not a cure all it gives visitors to br.st! links some increased confidence. And br.st! users can always add a “=” to the end of any br.st! link and see a screenshot along with title and meta information about the link.
And it is bur-st.
and also we don’t want bit.ly monopolizing this business of shortening urls which may seem benign now but dangerous later
301works is a sham
One of the only reasons why bit.ly gets used so mcuh is because Twitter automatically shortens long URLs posted in Tweets with bit.ly.
We think Twitter should give users the option to choose a URL shortener and set whether or not to use a preview link (for those shorteners that offer it – br.st does!).
What do you think?
Just paste your URL to AAfter Search box, we create two fail-safe urls for you- that is easy.. It is less likely two will go out of business.
I for one welcome our new GUID overlords.
In Soviet Russia, links shorten you.
Im glad I grew up in USA. I’m already 5′1” I couldn’t imagine being any shorter.
Why can’t a URL shortener service come up with a feature that will allow a person to actually see the destination URL upon mouse over? Is this really that hard to do?
Actually, would be easy, with a browser plug-in.
One implementation would be for the plug-in to follow the short link asynchronously to get the destination, then add details into the link’s alt text. Could be a security issue?
Hmm. I think a browser plug-in plus a server-side component with its own cache of short-links-to-long-links might be optimal.
check out http://www.longurlplease.com
you are probably wrong about tr.im. it has not dropped out of race.
They did for a bit, then didn’t.
I’ve compiled a list of all the URL Shorteners I can find (over 300 now):
http://blog.go2...-215-other.html
I’ve included stats on how popular they are on Twitter as a way of ranking them (better than Alexa or Compete for this type of service).
Sorry Leena, I know the word ’startup’ is definitely very cool but it hardly applies to Brinkster as they have been around for more than 10 years!
Ya, and having a company that’s been in the web industry for 10 years backing this shortening service, gives a bit of a sense of security knowing your shortened links won’t be dead two weeks from now…
Thanks for making these points. We agree.
Brinkster (http://br.st/74) is a 10 yr old web hosting company that runs its own datacenter and IS NOT going away any time soon.
Although we like to think that we are still as nimble and fast moving as a startup – we are probably more like an Internet veteran at this point. (we started in 1999)
Remember when 1999 was off in the distance and was only a thought in a Prince song? (”party like its 1999…”)
two thousand zero zero party over oops out of time.
Why would you want to submit a shortened URL to Digg?
God, another one in the ranks..:s
Hm, their API is only accessible using SOAP. No one should be forced to deal with SOAP for simple operation like this.
I like the fact that they do provide several API examples. You do need to sign up for an API key. What a drag.
is.gd is the fastest actually.
And well, what exactly is a startup? I thought I have seen Brinkster a decade ago.
I guess I’ve the best name for this service but don’t have bucks to promote it ;(
its Sho.Li
love breasts!
Can someone tell me what the business model is for URL shortening companies? Or point me to an article or two on the subject? Thanks
P.S. to: tenthings – who doesn’t?
How about advertising for something else? In Brinkster’s case, they are already a hosting company so assumably they have the infrastructure/resources to do this?? Drive lots of people to the shortening service – advertise web hosting services – make more $$… makes sense to me.
For Brinkster (http://br.st/74 – the company behind htt://br.st) there is a number of different reasons to launch a URL shortener. It is a marketing strategy for our core business, it is an opportunity for us to jump into a hot biz segment, and we have the resources to let something gain market share and then monetize it down the road.
@powertips – showing you the original URL on mouseover is really up to the website displaying the short url. For example, the r.im API allows sites to easily convert short urls back to long URLs dynamically, thereby providing the kind of pre-click heads up that you are looking for. I guess the short answer is that it’s not hard to do at all.
Time will demonstrate whether people need this kind of use.
This URL Shortner is not working
http://br.st/tu
it’s working if it’s supposed to redirect to is.gd…
That was humor.
That was pretty funny.
I have used br.st a few times now and love the stats compared to bit.ly’s, they have converted me!!
I recently wrote a quick blog post stating how I tihnk web hosts should provide url shortener/tracker app as a 1-click install for a users domain names. br.st is provided by a web hosting company. I wonder what they think about this idea or if it is already an option.
http://vocal.ly/p2o
That would be a cool add on for my blog.
Sounds like an interesting service. We would consider it along with finding a way to preserve keeping br.st and/or brinkster in the mix.
Beyond the simple redirecting from a link there is actually a lot that goes on behind the scenes (malware filtering, preview links and image and file sharing with comments coming soon).
let me know if you ever end up experimenting with the idea for your web hosting service. I’d like to write a follow-up blog post referencing your service if you do.
Thanks.
@sull
sulleleven -at- gmail
I also will be looking forward to the image service they plan to launch.
I used it. I like the thumbnail preview, very cool – and FAST. I’ll throw this one in the toolbox.
I got to testing the service out last night. I agree with you Tman71 – I’ll be tossing this tool into the toolbag as well. Do they have limits? When I was testing the service it stopped working then oddly shortly after 11pm pacific it started working again!? Do they limit the number of URL’s shortened per day or any thing like that? There was nothing in their FAQ regarding this type of thing. By the way for a free service it’s pretty solid!
There is a limit, you can shorten up to 50 long URLs every hour.
Are there many uses for this type of service outside of twitter? When the image and file stuff is available I can see how this would grab much more attention over the other shorteners.
What exactly is the purpose of a url shortener?
I love it! I can’t wait for the image sharing. Finally a company that can see the big picture.
Br.st just launched a full Twitter client. It has tons of features including image and file sharing. Best Twitter client yet. Check it out http://br.st