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A few years ago, a URL shortener was running on the .to ccTLD itself. That was the shortest possible URL shortener service since there are no single-character TLDs. Unfortunately it doesn't seem to work anymore.

there was also another that was using a unicode character (an arrow) as its domain name, not shorter technically, but in any character-counting situation, just as short as s.id

Yeah there was →.ws or something like that. Still longer than "to" though.

We've used http://v.gd for years.

Admit it thats your site

nope. and the homepage clearly says it is sponsored by "memset", whoever they are.

Clearly "memset" != "daurnimator" so yeah Q.E.D.

What are your use cases for shortening links? Is it for print?

All else being equal, sure, but this shortener throws up a branded redirect page for a second instead of just doing an HTTP 301 redirect. IMO, every character would have to count a lot to make up for the bad user experience.

Plus, they can't keep it this short for long. They can only shorten 3,844 URLs before they get up to 8 characters, and only 238,328 before they get up to 9, at which point it's only 3 characters shorter than j.mp. Getting popular will actually hurt their advantage.