From the archive (2009): Cligs is the 4th most popular URL shortener on Twitter
May 2009: Tweetmeme and TechCrunch ranked Cligs fourth among URL shorteners on Twitter and fifth among all domains in links. The post, and what the ranking meant.
From the archive. This post appeared on blog.cli.gs on 8 May 2009, written by Pierre Far, who founded and ran the Cligs URL shortener. We publish an excerpt here because the original address is still linked from around the web; the complete original is preserved in the Wayback Machine. A note from today follows the excerpt. The background is in cli.gs, 2008 to 2026.
Great news out of Tweetmeme and Techcrunch: Cligs is the fourth most popular URL shortener in use on Twitter, and the 5th most used domain in links overall. Thank you to everyone using Cligs, on Twitter and elsewhere! This is a great day for the whole community!
What happened next
This is the number most articles about Cligs quote. It came from Tweetmeme's live statistics, which counted links in tweets in May 2009, when Twitter had just made bit.ly its default shortener and tinyurl was losing ground. Being fourth meant tens of millions of forwards a month, run by one person on the side. Five weeks later the service was hacked (15 June 2009), and five months later it announced its shutdown. The full arc is in cli.gs, 2008 to 2026.