Analysis: Which URL Shortening Service Should You Use?

I've been using is.gd for a couple of reasons. First, "is.gd" is nice and short, and I find it extremely easy to type. The flow from key to key is very smooth. After that, the is.gd home page loads very quickly.

However, I find that the biggest advantage of is.gd , in comparison to bit.ly, cli.gs, TinyURL, etc, is the initial placement of the cursor.

On is.gd's home page, the cursor is placed in the text field, so all you need to do is paste your long URL, and hit enter. On the resulting page, the compressed URL is highlighted for you! So all you need to do is hit CMD+C/CTRL+C, and voila, the compressed URL is in your clipboard.

I don't care about tracking and the length of the URL is the only thing that matters to me. That's why I prefer http://tinyarro.ws/ They use unicode characters to get domains shorter, and I use www. instead of http:// if I need to squeeze an extra character.

I wish they had covered more about the tracking. For example cli.gs has similar tracking capabilities to bit.ly but the cli.gs interface is way more annoying.

Cli.gs also has geo targeting which is unique to my knowledge.