Mosho (🎉🐙.ws)

Mosho (🎉🐙.ws)

Whitelabel emoji URL shortener with detailed analytics

1 follower

Mosho (🎉🐙.ws) gallery image
Mosho (🎉🐙.ws) gallery image
Mosho (🎉🐙.ws) gallery image
Launch tags:EmojiTech
Launch Team
AssemblyAI
AssemblyAI
Build voice AI apps with a single API
Promoted

What do you think? …

Alex Alksne
Hi PH! Thanks for checking out this side-project of mine! Last week I was browsing Hacker News and saw a comment by @runnr_az re: his emoji domain registration engine (https://❤❤❤.ws). I was immediately excited by the prospect of building something novel and after some brainstorming settled on an emoji URL shortener registered under http://🎉🐙.ws (text-friendly name: http://Mosho.ws). My hubris was great - this was clearly an original idea that no one in the entire history of the internet had thought of. I immediately began working on a prototype using the MEAN stack (minus Angular as that seemed overkill for something so simple) with full confidence that I was to be the Mark Zuckerberg of emoji URLs. The original version simply mapped a given domain to a randomly-chosen combination of Unicode 6.0 emojis (the ones that your original iPhone 4S supported) - nothing more. I was about to start sharing around the site when I came across 🍕💩.ws (Linkmoji) and 📡👽.ws on Product Hunt - two great emoji URL shorteners that had already beaten me to the punch - doh! After my ego finished deflating I began to think of ways to improve on the original concept. I assumed that the most-desired feature would be custom emoji combinations so I added that first (your custom alias can be between 1 and 100 emojis). I also noticed that emoji URLs don't play nice with social media - like, at all (Twitter being the only exception at the time of this post). Through a lot of manual testing I narrowed down the URL formats that would be supported (and autolinked) by all the major players (Product Hunt, Hacker News, Slack, Reddit, Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest, and Tumblr) and displayed them in a tabulated list upon shortening. I also added detailed analytics. Originally I was just tracking clicks but ended up adding sources, mediums, cities, countries, browsers, platforms, and devices. Finally I added support for Unicode 6.1, 7.0, and 8.0 emojis which are what all modern phones offer - it currently supports 888 emojis (not intentional but awesome nonetheless). All in all it took about three days to build the core functionality and another four to polish the User Experience (I'm a backend dev by trade so frontend work doesn't come as naturally to me). I'm sure there are many ways in which Mosho can be improved and I look forward to everyone's feedback! Finally I'm greatly thankful for http://🍕💩.ws and http://📡👽.ws - their efforts inspired me to really push myself with this product - it wouldn't have been as polished had it not been for them.
John Meese
@alexalksne this is such a perfect example of the benefit of competition. As you said, the existing options inspired you to create something better when you might have settled before!
Alex Alksne
@johnrmeese thanks for the kind words!
Abhilash Jain
super cool, here is my link 🔛🍶👇.🎉🐙.ws , thanks for making @alexalksne
Alex Alksne
@findabhilash thanks for your support :)
Arun
@findabhilash @alexalksne I'm on Chromer for Android, and I'm unable to click this.
Alex Alksne
@iarunsb Dang, sorry that it's not working for you. I'll try and reproduce the issue and hopefully fix it ASAP.
BrianBest
Must...not...make... inappropriate URLs.......................... again. https://www.producthunt.com/post...
Alex Alksne
@brianbest http://🍆✊💦.🎉🐙.ws is still up for grabs, just sayin'
Daniel Sobey-Harker
The first thing you think is Gimicky but this could work really well among younger audiences who wish to show links to their profiles/pages/sites in a non traditional fashion. Cool idea guys!
Alex Alksne
@sobeyharker I also think this would primarily appeal to younger users. My hope is that it provides more memorable (and thus more shareable) URLs.
milly mona
how cAN CREAIT MY SHOTNER