What is Hop.im ?
Hop.im is a service that shortens URLs such as web addresses. This is useful in many circumstances (see below) e.g. in email clients that break long URLs.
For example you can turn
http://maps.google.co.in/maps?f=q&source=s_q&hl=en&q=&ie=UTF8&geocode=FbgvIgEdcrJXBA&split=0 intohttp://hop.im/l
Preview
Simply add a hyphen (dash) to the end of the shortened URL, and instead of being redirected to the original long address automatically, you'll be taken to a preview page telling you where the link goes.For Examplehttp://hop.im/l-
Uses for Hop.im
Here are just a few of the many uses for Hop.im's URL shortening service:
- Shorten web addresses for emails, forum posts, blogs etc. which cannot handle long URLs and might wrap them, making them unclickable
- Lower the character count when texting web addresses to a mobile phone
- Hide the real URLs of affiliate links from visitors to your site
- If you dislike a website and have to mention it (e.g. when complaining about it), link via Hop.im so that your link does not help the site's search engine positioning
- Clean up bookmarks for social bookmarking sites or sites with low character limits like Twitter
- Obscure your real email address from bots which harvest them to spam (enter an address like mailto:user.name@example.com)