Ow.ly URL Shortener Plus Image, Document And Video URL Shortening

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Ow.ly URL shortener has an Alexa Traffic Rank of ~#3,150 worldwide, and ~#2,000 in the United States. It has over 85k sites linking to it. It also ranks well in Venezuela, Mexico, Canada, Spain, and the United Kingdom.

It is the 3^rd most popular readily available URL shortening service.

Twitter, Facebook and google.com send the most visitors to Owly. The site is mainly used by females.

Most traffic arrives from the United States (~32%) and Japan (>10%). These and Mexico, United Kingdom, Spain, Canada, France, Brazil, Venezuela and India are the countries that send the majority of visitors to Owly.

You can shrink URLs without signing in, but you will need to sign up and sign in to use the image, document and video upload and URL shortening services.

Data courtesy of Alexa 2012/03/28.

You can use the URL shortening service without signing up or signing in. Whether you sign up or not, using the URL shrink service is easy and straightforward. Just type or paste a long URL into the appropriate box, enter the CAPTCHA, and click 'Shrink it'. That's it. Job done.

If you want to take advantage of the image, document or video short URL services then you need to sign up or sign in. This is done through your Twitter account. Just click the 'Sign in with Twitter' button, and away you go.

The screen you will see is as below:

As you can see you can shrink a long URL or upload files that will have a short URL created for them, for posting to Twitter or other places where short URLs are useful.

Before that though, the main usage of Owly is for long URL shortening. 

Once the 'Shrink it' button is pressed you are presented with the following screen:

The URL shortening process has been successful. You can now copy and paste the link wherever you require it.

Another facility is to 'Send to Twitter', but beware, pressing the button does just that without recourse. You are not taken to Twitter to compose your tweet. The tweet you want to post is created direct from Owly, by adding your message around the shortened URL. Owly conveniently tells you the number of characters left for the tweet message.

You can now upload certain file types to Owly for them to have short URLs created.

Image, file and (soon) video file types are supported. But there are restrictions on file types.

Supported formats for images are:

• jpg
• jpeg
• gif
• png

with a maximum image file size of 4MB.

Supported formats for files are:

• Word = doc, docx
• PDF = pdf
• Excel = xls, xlsx
• PowerPoint = ppt, pptx
• OpenOffice = odt, ods, odp 
• Text files = txt, rtf, csv
• PhotoShop = psd, psb
• Illustrator = ai, eps
• Flash = fla
• Music = mp3

with a maximum of 10MB.

Supported formats for video are: coming soon.

Any of the acceptable file formats for images can be uploaded from your computer. Just press the orange camera icon, select the appropriate image file, and it will be uploaded and linked with a short URL. The screen below will be shown once the upload is completed successfully.

This is a great way to transfer files to work colleagues via email or other secure services. It is also useful in making images that are not generally available on a website available to a broader audience.

Any of the acceptable file formats for documents or music files can be uploaded from your computer. Just press the blue document icon, select the appropriate document or music file, and it will be uploaded and linked with a short URL. The screen below will be shown once the upload is completed successfully.

This is a great way to transfer documents and / or music files to work colleagues via email or other secure services. It is also useful in making files that are not generally available on a website available to the social web.

Ow.ly is now much more than just a long URL shortener service. It has added functionality for social sharing. You can upload images, documents, music files and videos (soon) to Owly where they will be stored and accessed via the short URL Ow.ly creates for them.

You can even create a message around any shortened URL and 'Send to Twitter'.

The Ow.ly URL shortener service just became the best URL shortening service around.