URL Shortening Domain Question

[ClayShumate]

Hey,

I am thinking about making a url shortening site, and I am considering my domain options. I can get a 3 letter domain name which makes no sense (but it extremely short), or I can register a six letter name which is very brandable and easy to remember.

What do you think the best route is?

Thanks!

 

[Janine]

I have a url shortening site that has six letters, its great, brandable easy to remember.

but i prefer to have 'Shorter' ones.except LNL or anything that has Numbers on it. >.<
domains with number isn't easy to remember.

 

[DomainMOD]

except LNL or anything that has Numbers on it.

For the most part I agree, but sometimes the numbers may work, and might make the domain easier to remember because it's unique and a bit of a hack.

I built my own personal shortener at g02.ca ("go to"), and friends mention it to me regularly because it's 'different'. Obviously numbers aren't ideal, but whatever, I'll take what I can get, hehe.

 

[amoeba]

As short as possible.

 

[Robin]

go for shorter one, easy to type and remember.

 

[DomainMOD]

FYI, if $ isn't an issue, .im still has some 1 character domains available that would work well.

n.im (nimble urls)
v.im (ummm, 'very' nimble urls? :P)

There were some others too, maybe 5 or 6 1 character domains still available.

 

[daj]

I'd try to find a domain with the words: small, tiny, little, short, shorty, dwarf, midget, or mini in it. Use a word that describes the intention of the short url service you want to provide.

 

[DomainMOD]

IMO, with sites like no_url_shorteners and no_url_shorteners already having some of the shortest domains you can possibly have, URL shortening sites with full words will have a hard time catching up.

no_url_shorteners seemed to be the standard for a while, but now it's too long. With the character limitation of Twitter, if you really want your URL shortening site to catch on, the shorter the better. Every character counts these days.

 

[xman]

The shorter the better like these two:

Cr.am

no_url_shorteners

They are both url shortening site. I use to own cr.am and sold it more than a year ago.

 

[FanCube]

Go short, it is a shortening service! It also depends on how you want to construct your service and which users you aim at.

For example, the service no_url_shorteners has an easy to remember domain, but a generated URL could look like this: no_url_shorteners/HkJUi which is hard to remember so if your service will use similar URLs there is no point in using a longer but easy to remember domain as opposed to a shorter but harder to remember domain. An option would be to use the longer and easy to remember domain for the site and just use the three letter domain in the generated URLs.

Some people have reported that they had to monitor the service closely for abuse related to phishing scams etc.

 

[Barnard]

Long urls are hard for people to type. You can have two one long and one short makes it much easier for visitors to get to you.