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Taking Su.Pr for a Spin
By Chris Simpson | June 10, 2009
If you’re not posting updates on Twitter about how long the DMV line is, you’re likely sharing links. Twitter’s built-in character limit has given rise to a variety of URL shortening services – designed to save you that precious real estate in 140 character land.
I’ve typically used TinyURL, but the rise of fancier services complete with toolbars and stats finally forced me to try out su.pr from the StumbleUpon team. Thanks to beta invites from TechCrunch I’ve been putting the service through its paces. Here are some screens and comments.
Posting Interface
Once you set up your Twitter and Facebook hooks you’ve got a few options.
- Just shorten the URL
- Post a tweet and/or facebook status update
- Schedule your inspiring note for later (more on why you’d want to do this in a bit)
Only downside? I keep forgetting to uncheck the share on facebook option – I don’t want everything there. Oh well.
Reporting Interface
The service presents a nice clean interface of what you’ve posted and how many clicks you’ve received.
Bonus: your links are exposed to the StumbleUpon network and these stats are shown separately (more on this below image).
More from TechCrunch on the StumbleUpon connection:
“Su.pr is plugged into Stumbleupon, which gives each link an extra distribution push. Each link can then be voted upon by the StumbleUpon community, and if it becomes popular, it can take on a new life. For StumbleUpon, it is a way to seed the service with links people are already pushing out to their real-time streams. StumbleUpon links take longer to gain momentum, so one benefit is that it could extend the life of good links.”
Suggested Posting Times
Based on when and how many clicks your links receive, su.pr suggests when the best times to post. Using the scheduling functionality, you could schedule a few tweets around key times in the day. Or just bombard your followers with a steady stream of “sweet tweets.”
Overall Impresions
Service works as advertised. I’m an analytics geek, so being able to watch the stats on our posts is great. I doubt many of these services will be around within a year – and they’ve got as great of a business plan as Twitter – but it’s fun to play along with for now.
More on URL shorteners and their ilk
- List of lots of url shorteners and comparisons at Searchengineland.com
- “Are URL shorteners a necessary evil” at TechCrunch
- diggbar over on techmeme
Topics: Misc. | 3 Comments »
June 10th, 2009 at 9:35 am
First infraction, this is just a warning…
June 12th, 2009 at 6:04 pm
Nice post Chris, was good to here about su.pr and the detailed rundown was informative. Can’t say this is what I come onto this blog to read, but, still, I enjoyed it.
June 17th, 2009 at 9:21 am
Thanks Ken – appreciate the feedback. Especially in light of the usual wailing and gnashing of teeth heard around here when “this type” of post goes up.