A few weeks ago we bought the domain blue.gg and started thinking about what we could do with it. After a couple of no-goers we decided to build our very own URL (Uniform Resource Locator) (website address, for the less nerdy among us!) shortener.
What's a URL shortener we hear you ask?
Over the last couple of years Twitter, along with a couple of other tools, has become an increasingly popular way of communicating. One of the best things about Twitter is the fact that the user is limited to 140 characters per tweet. This is great because, in a world saturated by information, it allows people to read and write communications quickly whilst keeping details to a minimum.
The problem with this is, if you wanted to tell everyone about this lovely new mug you found on Amazon you'd need to give out this link - https://www.amazon.co.uk/Pantone-Mug-Duck-Blue-337C/dp/B002S0NSYA/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1295389510&sr=8-2 - bang goes 105 of those oh so precious little letters.
To solve this problem a number of websites popped up offering to shorten this link for you. All you have to do is paste in your long link and the site would produce a much smaller one for you.
Why build our own?
Sure, there's a number of URL shorteners around, one of which we have used before now so we could have just continued using that for our tweets and messages. Why didn't we? Well it's simple - branding. After all, it's what we do!
By building our own shortener, we can now use much smaller URL's whilst reinforcing our name and brand. So instead of that super long link to those lovely mugs, we can just use this - blue.gg/T (only 9 little characters!)
Plus, when we build things, we don't mess around. We had one mission - "To make the slickest URL shortener around". And we think we did. We've kept it to the bare minimum, with just a text field to paste your long link into and a 'Shrink' button. No page reloads, no complicated options, just a pixel perfect and sexy user interface.
Who can use it?
Absolutely anyone and everyone! It's completely free and we're happy for anyone to use it to shorten their links. We keep no personal data, so we're not planning to ring you up to sell you stuff. So if you've never used one before, or you just want to use the prettiest on the web just visit www.blue.gg and get shrinking!
