Tuesday, April 01, 2008

TinyURL.com vs. Tiny.cc

I've used TinyURL.com for a while now. I've never paid much attention to Tiny.cc, but TinyURL.com could learn a couple things from them.

For example, Tiny.cc's user interface aesthetically looks closer to the Web design of 2005+ vs. tinyurl.com's 1998-esque, Windows-based interface. Tiny.cc includes an AddThis button on the top to make it easy to bookmark the site using social bookmarking. And the final blow to TinyURL is the ability to "create personal or unique addresses using a keyword." So, instead of some gobbledygook that TinyURL.com spits out, you can have a very clean URL like http://tiny.cc/mckinsey_award.

I will concede that TinyURL.com does have 2 nice features.
  1. A Firefox Add on
  2. The ability to create a "preview" URL where one is directed to TinyURL.com's site. Once the user arrives at TinyURL.com's site, one can see exactly where they will be directed. This is especially nice if you don't necessarily trust the site you're at
However, Tiny.cc has a Firefox add on, and Tiny.cc uses preview pages (this is one of the ways they make there money through ad revenues).

So, Tiny.cc wins.

1 comment:

Unknown said...

Update: Hmm...Tiny.cc had a problem with an archived site from the Internet Archive. OK, I still like Tiny.cc