14 DAY TRIAL // After tens of startups, Facebook, Google and even YouTube launched their own URL shorteners, the whole frenzy seems to have died down. After all, Bit.ly still dominates the market, basically undisputed, despite the tens of competitors and it doesn't even make that much money with it. But if the URL shortener market is locked down, how about the emerging URL 'lenghtener' market?
Shady URL has taken that sector by storm by making all of your links longer or, at least, not that short. But anticipating that this alone may not be enough to gain a truly mainstream audience and breakthrough success, the entrepreneurs behind Shady URL decided not only to make your links longer but also 'spice' them up a bit to make them more enticing to potential readers or your friends as the case may be.
Let's see how it works in practice. Say you want to share a link, for example shadyURL.com, with your friends over IM or the world on Twitter. You could just paste the short and simple address and be done with it but who is really going to notice? Not many, that's for sure. This is where Shady URL comes in, just submit the link and the services secret, cutting edge algorithms will make the link not only longer, to be sure you make good user of Twitter's 140 characters, but also a lot more interesting, in this case, something like http://5z8.info/-----TAKE.TWITTER.LOGIN-----_p1w1c_girlsgonewildpart1.wmv.
As the site itself says, "don't just shorten your URL, make it suspicious and frightening." The announcement from its creators is equally informative, "sure, you can shorten your URLs, but that just leaves them mildly cryptic and foreboding. Use ShadyURL to make your URLs downright alarming." The product lends itself to all manners of practical uses. From scaring away your friends who swamp you with tens of boring YouTube videos every day to having your boss scream at you for spreading warez at the workplace, the potential for fun is endless.