Why tny.im?

There are hundreds of URL shorteners for public use, not including URL shorteners that are specific to some websites and for private use only. A simple web search will reveal loads of public URL shorteners. This begs the question: why use tny.im and not any other popular URL shortening service?

As you can read on the features list in the home page, tny.im offers, among other things:

• The ability to shorten many things other than URLs: images, text, email addresses, URL lists, Bitcoin addresses, etc.;
• Detailed statistics, with nice graphs and everything, for each short link;
• The ability to edit a short URL after it is created (to fix typos or correct broken URLs, for example);
• The possibility of previewing a short URL before actually being redirected;
• A social toolbar which you only enable if you wish, and that can be closed (permanently or temporarily) by the short link visitor;
• The possibility of shortening links easily while browsing the web, using the Bookmarklets and Prefix-n-shorten;
• Ease of use on mobiles, with an optimized website and a Firefox OS app.

Developers can also integrate tny.im with their websites and applications, using the API.

There are other tiny details which are listed here so you don't miss them:

• Shorten URLs can have upper and lower case letters, numbers, and hyphens;
• You can choose a custom keyword (the part after tny.im/), up to a length of 200 characters. If you don't choose one, you'll be given a sequential keyword;
• You can limit the number of hits in your short links, as well as set a expiration time. After a set amount of clicks in your short link, or after a set amount of seconds, the link is disabled and a message is displayed from then on.
• URLs to shorten can be up to 2000 characters long;
• At this stage, links with sequential keywords (i.e. without a custom keyword) are just 16 characters long, including the http://tny.im/ part;
• The redirect tny.im performs is a true HTTP 301 "Moved Permanently", assuring all the link credit (such as search engine ranks) goes for the original, long link.
• Full HTTPS support. The whole website can work over a SSL connection, with a valid certificate signed by StartCom. Short links work over HTTPS (keep in mind that will increase their length by one character). Click here to go to the HTTPS version of the website.

On the privacy side, we're like DuckDuckGo: We don't track or bubble you, or the people who click on tny.im short links. We collect IP addresses for debugging and security reasons (so we can ban people who abuse the service by shortening too many URLs at a time, for example), but we never make them public, much less privately disclose them with third parties.

Access logs are deleted periodically (usually in less than a week, even because we don't have enough storage to keep them all, if we wanted). The only thing that remains are the simplified short link click logs (click time+location+referrer), which are not personally identifying. We are fully aware of the fact there's not much we can do to prove you this is the truth, but we're available to answer any questions you may have.

Still unsure on why you should, or shouldn't, use tny.im? We've made a comparison between this and other shorteners, make sure to check it out!