LinkBunch

Hi, I’m Aalaap Ghag and I’m the developer of LinkBunch (http://linkbun.ch).

What is LinkBunch?

LinkBunch is a new Web 2.0 service that allows you to create one short link that points to multiple links. A LinkBunch link is easy to remember and share compared to multiple links.

When would I use LinkBunch?

Often you may find yourself in a situation where you need to point to a lot of links, but a shortage of space prevents you from doing so. Typical scenarios include Twitter, the popular micro blogging platform, which limits each ‘tweet’ to 140 characters, forms on the web which provide you a box for only one link and mobile phone SMSs amongst other things.

LinkBunch lets you take all those links, put them into one ‘bunch’, which results in a small link such as linkbun.ch/0. This small link can be easily placed in any of the abovementioned services which have a space premium. On clicking the link, the visitor is taken to a page on the LinkBunch site containing all the links on one page, which he or she can then click and move on ahead.

Where else can LinkBunch be useful?

Apart from services which have limited space for links, LinkBunch can be used wherever simplicity is required. During a presentation, you might want to provide several links to the audience, but you can’t expect them to make a note of each link or type it out from slide printouts. Just give them a LinkBunch at the end–it’s short and easy to remember–and you’ve effectively given them 10, 15–maybe even 50 links if you will–in just one line.

As mentioned before, LinkBunch also makes it very easy to send a lot of links over a single SMS containing the short LinkBunch link. You can share multiple links while talking on the phone without having to recite each link separately.

You can create flyers for events and just have one LinkBunch link on it, which points to links of interest to your event audience, such as the companies participating in the event, the website of the event itself and other relevant links.

Individuals can use LinkBunch in their email or forum signatures, which make for a cleaner emails and posts and still convey all the links. They can also use it in newspaper classifieds where space is at a very high premium.

How do I use LinkBunch?

Being a Web 2.0 service, LinkBunch is very easy to use. You simply paste all the links into the big text box at linkbun.ch and press the ‘Bunch’ button to get your short LinkBunch link. That’s it. There’s no accounts to create, no sign-ins, no email verification, none of that sort of stuff that usually puts off users looking to do one small thing.

For visitors, the LinkBunch page with all the links also provides a convenient ‘Open entire bunch’ link that lets you open all the links in one go, which useful if there are a lot of links and you indeed want to visit them all.

What other features does LinkBunch provide or have in the pipeline?

The first and most important feature addition will be the integration of a user account system, which will let the user manage all the bunches that he/she has created, i.e. add/edit links to existing bunches, delete bunches that are no longer required, track the popularity of bunches, password protect bunches and so on.

Since I strongly believe in open web standards, the user account system will support OpenID, so there won’t be a sign-up process on LinkBunch. Anyone with a Google Blogger, WordPress, LiveJournal, MyOpenId or ClaimID account (amongst others) will be able to sign-in and start using the advanced features of the site instantly without having to register for a new account.

The next intended addition to LinkBunch is a set of social features, so you can have friends on the site and see what bunches they have created (if public), tag bunches, find people who have bunched up similar links and so on.

How can I contact LinkBunch / its developers?

I can be contacted via several online mediums, all of which have been put into one LinkBunch here: http://linkbun.ch/33t.

There couldn’t be a more fitting use and example of LinkBunch!

You can also contact me directly via email at aalaap@gmail.com.