I received an email from Richard Lau about his new URL shorting service, XR.com. Richard said XR.com will be a tinyurl killer and will offer the shortest URLs out of any URL shortening services. XR.com does have an advantage in that its URL is very short to begin with – just two main letters.
What makes XR.com unique is it will be built with the help of its users. New features will be add based on feedback from you. And this was why Richard contacted me. He wants you to try out the service and tell him what you like and dislike about it.
A short URL comes in handy for services like Twitter, where you’re limited to 140 characters, and affiliate marketing, where it helps to mask the affiliate link. Affiliate marketers will like XR.com over other services because it has the ability to track clicks.
XR.com Vs. TinyURL
To test if XR.com really does provide the shortest URL in the industry, I tested it using my last miscellaneous rambling post, which has 73 characters in the URL. Here’s the URL created by the two services.
XR.com was able to shorten my URL down to just 10 characters, significantly shorter than the 18 characters it took for tinyurl.com. If you don’t need a super short URL, you can use XR.com to create a custom URL – instead of xr.com/eap, it could be xr.com/misc-ramble.
XR.com is entirely free to use. You don’t have to sign up for an account in order to use it. However, if you do set up an account, you’ll get access to a bunch of added features like click tracking and management of all the URLs you create.
Set up an account, give XR.com a try and let Richard know what you think.