The TinyURL homepage includes a form which is used to submit a long URL for shortening. For each URL entered, the server adds a new alias in its hashed database and returns a short URL. According to the website, the shortened URLs will never expire. TinyURL offers an API which allows applications to automatically create short URLs. This is done by simply reading the result returned from tinyurl.com/api-create.php?url=URLENCODED_SOURCE_URL. Short URL aliases are seen as useful because they are easier to write down, remember or distribute. They also fit in text boxes with a limited number of characters allowed. Some examples of limited text boxes are IRC channel topics, email signatures, microblogs, certain printed newspapers, and email clients that impose line breaks on messages at a certain length. Starting in 2008, TinyURL allowed users to create custom, more meaningful aliases. This means that a user can create descriptive URLs rather than a randomly generated address. For example, https://tinyurl.com/wp-tinyurl leads to the Wikipedia article about the website. On 30 July 2020 many users discovered that many previously created TinyURLs were not working, including at least any with dashes. These broken TinyURLs can now be repurposed by anyone, resulting in a significant issue for any website listing TinyURLs.
Preview short URLs
To preview the full URL from the short TinyURL, the user can visit TinyURL first and enable previews as a default browser cookie setting or copy and paste the short URL into the browser address bar, and prepend the short tinyurl.com/x with preview.tinyurl.com/x. Another preview feature is not well documented at the TinyURL site, but the alternative shortened URL with preview capability is also offered to shortcut creators as an option at the time of creation of the link.
Impact
Similar services
The popularity of TinyURLs influenced the creation of at least 100 similar websites. Most are simply domain alternatives while some offer additional features.
People posting on Twitter often made extensive use of shortened URLs to keep their tweets within the service-imposed 140 character limit. Twitter used TinyURL until 2009, before switching to Bit.ly. Currently, Twitter uses its own t.co domain for this purpose. Though Twitter has extended its limit to 280 characters, it automatically shortens links longer than 31 characters using its t.co domain.
TinyURL-whacking
The TinyURL method of allocating shorter web addresses has inspired an exploration activity known as TinyURL-whacking. Random letters and numbers can be appended after the first forward slasht.co/, in an attempt to find and reveal interesting sites without finding and copying a previously known referrer's link.
