BLU.CC new URL Shortening Service

I posted a blog recently about URL alternatives to Bit.ly that you can refer to here.

Craigslist is constantly changing the rules and making it harder and harder to use hyperlinked URL shorteners.  Backpage is a bit more lenient and as a matter of fact, as of Sept 15, 2011, I found the latest URL shortener that’s sticking.  It’s called Blu.cc and it’s currently in Beta. Which means of course, it may go bust at any time in the next 6 months or so.

Case in point, in my last update earlier this year, kl.am was working for Craigslist and since has gone bust sometime in January. Their page takes homage to Douglas Adams with the ‘so long and thanks for all the fish’ line.

Blu.cc markets themselves with the tagline “Small links for tweeting” as they try to break into the popular and competitive twitter realm.

PS: is.gd is still valid but I haven’t been able to use them on Craigslist for a while.

I posted a blog recently about URL alternatives to Bit.ly that you can refer to here.

I had been using Zi.ma for a few months in place of bit.ly on CL as craigslist has blacklisted bit.ly links but zi.ma was being accepted.  However, today it has been down, which is bad for business if you know what I mean.

I searched around and found an interesting bit of info on Zi.ma:

http://kl.am/ZiMaAndKlAm

So I went ahead and registered for a free KL.AM account and switched / adjusted my links and now I’m back in business.  Klam offers some nice tracking features too – like stats  - visits and clicks even geo tracking.

You gotta love the creativity with these site names and extensions.

Zima – bad beer alternative beverage of the 90s.

Klam. . .  sounds like one of the cartoon words from the 60s Batman show during fight scenes.

Ka-blam! Ker-Pow!

Anyway, if you are looking for another alternative URL link shortening site, check out http://kl.am

*UPDATE* January 23, 2011

Kl.am no longer works (hasn’t in a while) I noticed that people are still reading this post and i figured i’d update it with WHAT’S WORKING NOW.
The URL Shortening site I’ve been using to this day successfully on Craigslist and Backpage is is.gd

Here’s the link http://is.gd

You’re Welcome

Link Shortening Service Alternatives To Bit.ly

Trying to post on Craigslist is getting more and more difficult.  As of November 25th, 2009, 2 of the most popular link shortening services, Bit.ly and tinyurl.com are now blacklisted.  So I went out to find some new ones to see if I could find one that still works. . . and I did.

Backstory:
URL shortening services were initially popular because web addresses started to get long and links would break when sent in an email. However, as microblogging services like Twitter have become popular, an increasing number of services and applications, including tracking & metrics, have been added to the basic URL shortening features.

Service	Customizable URL	Tracking	301 Redirect	Unique Features
tinyurl.com	Yes	No	Yes	Toolbar button
cli.gs	Yes	Yes	Yes	Stats are private, real time and very detailed, geotarget URLs based on country of visitor, bookmarklet.
zi.ma	Yes	Yes	Yes	Bulk URL shortening, registration not required for stats, download stats to CSV, bookmarklet, “popular” links page
bit.ly	Yes	Yes	Yes	Saves copy of page linked to, tracks “conversations”, Twitter search fo uses of shortened URL, bookmarklet, import to Google spreadsheets
twurl.nl (aka tweetburner)	No	Yes	No	Most popular items linked in last hour, bookmarklet, built in to Twhirl
is.gd	No	No	Yes	Really bleeping short URLs, bookmarklet, Firefox plugin, built in to Twhirl
snipurl.com (aka Snurl Snipr Sn.im)	Yes	Yes	Yes	Popular snips, snip search, RSS feed for snips, export to Excel, claim snips before you registered, edit snips
poprl.com	No	Yes	No	Most POPular links, top domains, public stats, search, must register with Twitter account – boo
ad.vu (aka adjix)	No*	Yes	No	Optional ads that share revenue, scheduled Tweeting, *use your own domain name as the link URLs, bookmarklet, option to use ad.vu
tr.im	Yes	Yes	Yes	Uses Twitter or identi.ca info for login, bookmarklet
budurl.com	Yes	Yes*	No**	Detailed, real time stats (*if you upgrade) this is the only service with fees but there is a free version, **uses 307 redirect

Thanks to TopRankBlog.com for this table of the best URL Link Shortening Services!