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Two computer whizzes from Wigan have helped make the internet three million characters shorter!
IT experts Rich Kavanagh and Scott Stevens built and designed a web program which shortens URLs, Uniform Resource Locators, or web addresses as they are commonly known, in their spare time.
However, despite the success of their website, Fwd4.me, the pair are not in it for any financial gain.
Rich, 36, from Worsley Mesnes, said: "In terms of what we get from it, well, just pride and satisfaction that people use it and like it I guess.
"It's a good feeling to know that two blokes from Wigan are taking on the world and are responsible for making the internet 3,000,000 characters shorter."
In fact Fwd4.me is a hobby, albeit a particularly useful one.
It took Rich, who was recently made a Fellow of the British Computer Society, and Scott, 25, from Springfield, two weeks to build.
Rich wrote the coding and Scott designed the graphics, buttons and images on the site.
They also monitor and maintain the site of a daily basis, largely to stop so-called spammers – the junk-mailers of the internet – in their tracks and pride themselves on it being safe and secure.
They have established something of a following and count Go Daddy, the world's biggest domain registrar, Keep Britain Tidy, Hull City Council and Steve Steinman, star of the Vampires Rock stage show, among their regular users.
Although it is a useful tool whenever a web address needs sending via the internet, URL shortening comes into its own when used on the social networking site Twitter.
Twitter limits each post to a mere 140 characters, making space a premium.
But it was the challenge of taking on a established rival that motivated them to create the site.
Rich said: "What drove us to create the site was that the original and probably the oldest URL shortener out there is called TinyURL, but because it's that old now, the URLs it creates aren't actually that short anymore!
"It is also lacking in a few features that we thought would be useful, like the click stats so you can see how many people have clicked on your short URLs, and so on."
Rich said: "We started off writing the development blog for it so people could see it emerging as a product and track its growth.
"We also started mentioning it on Twitter, then got a few people to recommend it to their friends and it kind of went from there.
"Now, if you type 'url shortener' into Yahoo, we're third in the results!"
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Friday 25 May 2012
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