Use Mzan.si to Shorten Your URLs
by Varaidzo Mubaiwa on 2010/02/22
South African Tourism approached us with an exciting and large brief - spread the word online about South Africa. Many ideas were tossed around, but in the end, it was a simple solution that proved best - http://mzan.si. This URL shortener was launched last week and is proving both useful and successful.
The URL shortener was created and developed as part of the 2010 FIFA World Cup™ campaign. It allows anyone to shorten, track and share links easily through a number of social networks.
South African Tourism are then able to market South Africa as a destination through unobtrusive, geo-targeted advertising within the tool. It offers a functional way for South Africans to fly the flag and spread the word about their country.
Finding the right name for the tool didn’t come easy though. Hours were spent looking for a uniquely South African domain, one which would use few enough characters to be considered a URL shortener.
Dis.ki, meaning "South African soccer", was one of our favourites. We had to take into consideration that the World Cup wasn’t going to stay in South Africa forever (as sad as it is!) and our URL had to have sustainability beyond 2010.
There are many things one has to consider to get a cool name. We couldn’t register domains (the suffix – as in .com. or.nl) in certain countries as one has to be a resident to do that. We spent hours on www.101domain.com until we found domain names that weren’t already in use.
We came up with some really cool sounding names, like Ayo.ba which means "expression of excitement". As much as Ayoba has become part of our language, it belongs to MTN. Kwa.ai, meaning "cool" or "awesome" and Howz.it which means "hello" were other options we chatted through until we finally agreed on Mzan.si - meaning South Africa. This name just felt right and it embodied everything the URL shortener was aimed at doing - promoting and raising awareness about South Africa worldwide.
Image Credit: http://mzan.si
In 24 hours, the tool generated 289 shortened URLs which represent 227 target URLs. Mzan.si links have already been clicked on all over the world, over 10 275 times (and counting!).
A big thumbs up to everyone on the project team at Quirk and at South African Tourism for Mzan.si’s successful debut! Register now and start using this awesome new URL shortener. Also send us your feedback to help us with our updates and constant improvements.
