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Filed under: Internet, Web services, Social Software, web 2.0

Digg's new Diggbar will destroy other short url services



Everyone knows about the power of Digg. We've seen it first hand many times here at DLS with waves of Digg faithful pouring in when a hot story hits the feed. Today, they've taken the gloves off and come out swinging at other short URL and social sharing services with the new Diggbar.

Apart from making it easy to submit items to Digg, the toolbar also integrates with Facebook and Twitter and can send links via email. There's nothing to install, just a simple bookmarklet that should work with any web browser. Click it and the page reloads with the Diggbar perched on top, ready to submit the page to Digg and share stats on previously dugg items.

A short URL is automatically created for the page, and the Diggbar has one big advantage over other competitors like TinyURL, bit.ly, and Is.gd: name recognition. There's no doubt that the service will benefit from not only from Digg's popluarity, but also from Kevin Rose's massive Twitter following and general "star power."

No need to visit Digg to view comments, either. Just click the button and they'll appear between the bar and the page itself. The bar also includes buttons to visit a random site or check out related Digg submissions.

As if that weren't enough, Thwirl integration is coming. Once it's live, users will be able to use Digg as their default short URL service. Since the features have been made available via Digg's API, developers of other apps can start taking advantage of it as well.

Maybe you don't think Diggbar will destroy the others, but there's no denying it'll make some serious noise.

[via Digg Blog]

Tr.im shortens and tweets URLs, tracks stats, and more


There are a lot of god URL truncators out there, like Snipr, Is.gd, and TinyURL. For a new service to stand out, it's got to bring something interesting to the table.

Tr.im does just that. Apart from offering URLs that are about as short as you're going to get (8 characters on my tests), they've added a couple interesting features.

For starters, Tr.im will truncate your link and automatically update your Twitter or Identi.ca status. The service also tracks stats and allows commenting on your URLs. There is, of course, a bookmarklet and API access is provided for developers.

Creating an account allows you to store your history and gives you access to a number of useful preference settings. Tr.im doesn't even require creating a new account to log in - just use your Twitter credentials.

You can choose to auto-copy new URLs to the clipboard, automatically trim and tweet, and save your Twitter and Identi.ca passwords. Another interesting feature is Tr.im's retweet service, which automatically adds popular submissions to their Twitter feeds.

It's an excellent service, and may just be my new favorite truncator.

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