URL shortening services have been around for years but it wasn't until Twitter exploded onto the scene that people found a real use for them. And since then there have been a myriad of new services launched, offering much of the same functionality. Now StumbleUpon has also announced a similar product, Su.pr, which it claims offers some unique advantages over its competition.

"Su.pr makes it faster and easier to syndicate and measure your content, helping publishers increase their reach and efficiency," said Garrett Camp, StumbleUpon CEO. "And from every Su.pr link, users can discover other great content from that publisher."

The service is currently in private beta and will allow users to share a link, with a shortened URL, through Twitter but also Facebook and obviously StumbleUpon. The interesting touch is that the site offers a dashboard so you can keep track of how much the link is being shared and spread. It shows how many clicks it has got and also how many retweets as well as the number of followers for the ones retweeting the link.

This is the key element of the service. Su.pr doesn't want to be just another URL shortener; instead it aims to be more like a 'link tracking' service. The functionality is similar to bit.ly but it does have the advantage of StumbleUpon integration, which can prove a useful tool for spreading a link. And the company benefits from this too, as it gets links that normally might not be added to the service.

Su.pr links work similarly to the infamous Diggbar by adding a StumbleUpon toolbar frame on top of the linked site instead of redirecting straight to the content. This however may be changed by the time the public version arrives as websites will be able to host the toolbar themselves by registering with the service. Whether this new product will be enough to save StumbleUpon, which has seen a decline in popularity under eBay's umbrella from which it was recently freed, remains to be seen.