Ikr.me (ikrme mean “iHog”) is the first Serbian URL shortener. Ok, so it’s the only Serbian URL shortener, but hey… The guy behind the project is Predrag Stojadinovic, known from his previous work on MojID.rs, the first serbian OpenID provider. There is an emerging wave of Twitter and Friendfeed users in Serbia, and they are likely to make hay with this new service.
Ikr.me is very similar to other URL shorteners like Bit.ly. You get stats and an optional code for “friends-only links”. If you choose to fill in the password field, this shortener provides you stats of the clicks and gives your users the chance to preview content rather than just redirecting.
An interesting option is the password enabled links. Sending the password with the link allows only certain users to preview content. An additional option for user is to add the “-” operator at the end of the link, which will open just a preview of the link destination: very useful if you get a link from someone you do not know or do not trust. Links are in the worst case scenario, 20 characters long, which gives great look to “groked” links. This URL shortener provides a short link and the percentage of shortening with each link shortened, as well as the original links and ikr.me address.
The has an API that is very easy to use and provides the automatic URL shortening feature to other services. The API is also provided for the optional password, as well as for the statistics and preview feature. IKr.me also has a bookmarklet.
It’s not a big tech revolution with this service, but it is a nice service for Serbian “Twitterholics”. Did we mentioned it is the only Serbian URL shortener?
… This is hardly newsworthy.
it is if you’re in Serbia dude.
Serbia is not very “web” country, though adoption of the new technlogies and media is emerging. I expect you will here more about Serbian web startups in years to come
Thanks for covering this TC – this is really big news in Serbia.
Eastern Europe has lots of serious techheads – the region isn’t nearly as backward as it’s often perceived
H.
I totally agree.
There are several very successfull products coming from Serbia such as two popular project management softwares (ActiveCollab and Goalkeeper) or vertical search engine Vast.com which is mostly developed here. In the end this is not so big country with 6-8 million ppl and Internet penetration is still on poor level (35.6%) so probably best things are yet to come.
Its amazing such a short url, brilliant.