A huge number of URL shortening services have sprung up over the past couple of years.  When you’re sharing things over the internet a short URL can be very handy.  This is especially true if you’re using IM or a microblogging service like Twitter, Identi.ca or Plurk where space is at a premium, or email where URLs can break if they span onto a second line of text.

So, which URL shortening service is best to use?  I’ve looked at three of the most popular.  You never know, the one you always turn to might not actually be the best one for.

Tinyurl: Tinyurl is probably the best known and most widely used service of the three we’re looking at here.  Outputting a URL of 25 characters it’s not the shortest URL you can get but on the plus side it automatically copies to your computer clipboard.  Tinyurl is also supported by default on the fantastic new Firefox extension Ubiquity and you can also add it to your browser toolbar, meaning that you don’t even need to visit the website to create a URL.

Snurl: An amalgam of three services that do the same thing; Snurl, Snipr and Snipurl.  Once again Snurl copies the output URL to your clipboard and it at 22 characters it has the edge over Tinyurl on length.  The slight caveat here is that by default the service adds the domain name of your ’snipped’ URL in brackets to the clipboard as well as the shortened URL, meaning you may have to do some deleting to get down to that 22 characters.  That said, the ability to log in to your own account on the site means you can keep a record of all the URLs you shorten in case you want to reuse them in future.  Snurl also offers a privacy key that it can add to your output URLS to stop other people guessing them and a directory of what snipped URLs are most popular at present.

Is.gd: If shortness is what you’re after, Is.gd is the way to go.  It offers output URLs of just 17 characters – the shortest on this list.  As with Tinyurl, they offer a link for your browser toolbar.  They also offer a Firefox plugin.  You can add keywords to the end of your URLs too, to make them a bit more personal.

So who wins?

Well, Is.gd offers the shortest URLs but other than that is low on frills.  That said, the frills it does offer are the ones that people using an URL shortening service are likely to want.  Snurl is the strongest on extra features, with its user accounts and privacy option.  Up against those two, Tinyurl sits somewhere in the middle with only its default appearance in Ubiquity to set it apart.

The bottom line?  So, if you want short URLs go for Is.gd, if you’re a frequent URL shortener you might prefer Snurl’s features but you sacrifice getting the shortest possible URL.  Me?  I’ll be using Is.gd in future I reckon.