Now that Google has officially entered the URL shortening game, it’s put into threat many of the countless other services that are struggling to remain relevant in this space. Will goo.gl crush all it opposes or will their competitors rely solely on differentiation? That users will prefer random letters made into cute words they don’t pay attention to whatsoever anyways?
I figure this would be a good time to reflect on the ‘heyday’ of URL shortening – when anyone with $10 and a game of Boggle could launch a multi-million dollar business! We can obviously see the results of this gold rush now, but let’s also take a look at the ones that didn’t quite make it… ones that never lived up to their potential or may have been too bold, too soon.
I present you with the list of the Top 10 Failed URL Shortener Spinoffs of all-time:
facetio.us
A spinoff of the now defunct faceto.us aimed at sharing humorous links. Coming in at a whopping double digit number of characters, company went under after web users thought they were “just kidding”.
biCurio.us
A sub-brand of curio.us aimed at users who want to share links, but aren’t sure which social media platform they lean towards.
DigBig.as
Created as a collaborative project between just.as and DigBig as a shortener exclusively for fans of Sir Mix-a-Lot.
is.god
The religious right wing of is.gd branded as “the moral way to shorten”. When questioned that their web address contains an invalid top-level domain name, the company creators stated “it all comes down to faith that the Lord will get you there”.
fire.me
The merger of fire.to and bloat.me was destined for success… until most users who were found clicking on their links were subsequently fired for spending too much time at work on Twitter.
shur.ly
Why did shurl.net go out of business? A 47 year-old loner obsessed with the movie Airplane! thought it was cute to purchase this domain name… then launch a “don’t call it Shirley” campaign against the company.
bacn.il
The eccentric founders of bacn.me attempted to expand into the lucrative Middle Eastern market without realizing most of their users couldn’t click on their links for religious reasons.
MooUrl.in
Same fate as above for this MooURL spinoff.
clit.ly
In the attempt to compete with the popular bit.ly, the downfall came early when female bloggers saw that all male visitors were getting 404 “not found” pages.
fuck.it
A rich entrepreneur paid $10 million from the Italian porn industry for domain name to compete against hurl.it. As a monetization method, approximately 3% of the shortened links take you to advertisements, spam & malware. Directed at the gambler inside all of us, the service’s tagline was “A viral video or a virus? C’mon, fuck it!”