14 DAY TRIAL // Announced a month ago, Su.pr, the new URL shortening service from StumbleUpon, the web site discovery service, has just emerged from private beta and has been made available to the public. Su.pr comes with the usual features most URL shorteners, of which there is no short supply, sport these days, but its ties with StumbleUpon could prove to its advantage.
“About a month ago, we announced the Beta release of Su.pr, the first URL-shortening service that exposes your posts to Twitter, FaceBook and StumbleUpon simultaneously. Starting today, Su.pr is available for all StumbleUpon registered members!,” the rather short official announcement said. “Su.pr is linked to your existing StumbleUpon account. If you are not a member already, the Su.pr homepage will prompt you to create an account.“
Su.pr offers all of the basic functionality, URL shortening obviously, statistics, like the main competitor bit.ly, but also some nice small features like the possibility to post to Facebook and Twitter at the same time or the ability to schedule a post, with recommendations based on your previous posting behavior.
The dashboard that displays all the various stats like clicks, retweets, StumbleUpon traffic may not be revolutionary but it does bring StumbleUpon integration, something no other URL shortening service can boast. In fact this is the only thing setting it apart as it gives users another distribution platform to push their links.
And while StumbleUpon may not be as popular as other services it does claim an 8 million user base so a link that becomes popular on the service could get some nice traffic figures. And this is beneficial for the service too, as it gets fed with new links everyday that it might otherwise not add. Su.pr does have some improvements over other services that might set it apart but it remains to be seen whether it will be enough to push away some of the entrenched services like bit.ly, which dominates the market.