TinyURL

TinyURL is a URL shortening web service, which provides short aliases for redirection of long URLs. Kevin Gilbertson, a web developer, launched the service in January 2002 as a way to post links in newsgroup postings which frequently had long, cumbersome addresses. TinyURL was the first notable URL shortening service and is one of the oldest still currently operating.

TinyURL is a URL shortening web service, which provides short aliases for redirection of long URLs. Kevin Gilbertson, a web developer, launched the service in January 2002 as a way to post links in newsgroup postings which frequently had long, cumbersome addresses. TinyURL was the first notable URL shortening service and is one of the oldest still currently operating. ===Preview short URLs=== To preview the full URL from the short TinyURL, the user can visit TinyURL first and enable previews as a default browser cookie setting or copy and paste the short URL into the browser address bar, and prepend the short tinyurl.com/x with preview.tinyurl.com/x . Another preview feature is not well documented at the TinyURL site, but the alternative shortened URL with preview capability is also offered to shortcut creators as an option at the time of the creation of the link. ===Similar services=== The popularity of TinyURLs influenced the creation of at least 100 similar websites. Most are simply domain alternatives while some offer additional features. ===X (formerly Twitter)=== People posting on X (formerly Twitter) often made extensive use of shortened URLs to keep their tweets within the service-imposed 140-character limit. Twitter used TinyURL until 2009, before switching to Bit.ly. Currently, X uses its own t.co domain for this purpose, automatically shortening links longer than 31 characters using its t.co domain. ==External links==

Text derived from https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?oldid=1376614055 under CC BY-SA 4.0; modifications have been made.