Since TinyURL made the concept of URL-shortening huge, and since Twitter has made it more important than ever, there have been a lot of sites springing up and offering similar services. There’s the ultra-tiny is.gd, the statistic-centric TweetBurner, and a smattering of other TinyURL clones. Heck, it’s not that hard to roll your own private URL shortener if you have a reasonably short domain. (You could use GoCodes…)
Yet another shortener has sprung up, and this one is a bit different.
BurnURL is an URL shortener with a moderately-short domain, a Web 2.0-ish design, and some unique features. Shortened URLs are displayed in a frameset with a small blue bar along the top with icons to share the link on various social bookmarking/networking services. It also tracks hits, and has a vote-up/vote-down rating.
An interesting idea. It certainly promises to bring some extra traffic in. You don’t have to worry about having StumbleUpon, Digg, or Delicious pointing to BurnURL addresses either. The icons use your actual pag URL instead, except for the “Share on Twitter” button, which uses the BurnURL to save on space.
Though I usually have an aversion to frameset toolbars, I kind of like BurnURL. The top bar fits in well with usual uses for URL shortening, and promotes the sharing of the pages.
BurnURL for this page: http://burnurl.com/2gAh72.
