We are now responsible for making the internet over 50,000 characters shorter!

We have just hit another major landmark:

As you'll know from using our site, we always quote the following line:

Responsible for making the internet x characters shorter!

You can probably guess that x is the number of characters that we have shortened with our URL shortening service.

Well, we're pleased to announce: We are now responsible for making the internet over 50,000 characters shorter!

The URL that brought us to this landmark figure was:

http://fwd4.me/1z

It started life as a 170-character long URL of 'http://shop.ebay.co.uk/?_from=R40&_trksid=p3907.m38.l1311&_nkw=mondeo+rear+lights&_sacat=See-All-Categories' and we shortened it down to just 17 characters.

So, it's been an interesting few months, holidays delayed development of our site meaning some new features have been delayed but we're back on track now and a recent code overhaul saw us able to release some 1-character (long?) short URLs. These, as you'd expect, got used up rather rapidly but we've still got over three thousand 2-character (long?) short URLs available before we notch up to three characters (of which there will be nearly quarter of a million available).

Don't forget, you can also make your own custom URLs like this one, celebrating our latest landmark, http://fwd4.me/50k

Over the last few weeks, we've also noticed some cool organisations are using our service. To name a few:

• Go Daddy (@GoDaddy)
  
• Keep Britain Tidy (@KeepBritainTidy)
  
• Hull City Council (@HullCCNews)
  
• PC Firm (@PCFirm)
• I.T. Vibe (@ITVibe)

(Thanks again!)

So development continues...

Over the next couple of weeks we're going to be expanding our stats and link-tracking capabilities, more news on that soon. We're also going to update the preview options we have - again giving you more information. Not forgotten, your Profile page will also get a long overdue update too.

We're also going to be creating a league table (a top ten really) of popular URLs, along with a list of the most recently created URLs - we just haven't decided where to put this information yet...

Thanks again for helping us be responsible for making the Internet 50,000 characters shorter!