Pathik Shah

TinyURL.Com

TinyURL has been in the game since the very beginning; it was probably the first service which kickstarted the whole URL shortening trend. It offers no extra features, just the basics – enter a long URL and get a TinyURL. You can also specify a custom URL like http://www.tinyurl.com/pathik

Bit.Ly

Bit.Ly is another popular URL shortening service. It offers much shorter URLs than TinyURL as well as custom URLs. It also offers URL tracking and statistics. You can track the number of clicks, referrers etc. To view the stats of your shortened URL – http://www.bit.ly/pathik, visit http://www.bit.ly/info/pathik

Is.Gd

Is.Gd is a good alternative to the above two services, but it has no frills, just basic URL shortening. It doesn’t offer custom URLs, tracking etc, but is shorter than both Bit.Ly and TinyURL. http://is.gd/16vUZ

There are many more URL shortening services like Cli.gs, SnURL.com, zURL.ws etc, it doesn’t matter which you choose to use. I prefer to use Bit.Ly for the tracking features it provides. Plus, it is also the default Twitter URL shortener.