The TinyURL website has a text box to enter a long URL. For each URL entered, the server adds a new alias in its hashed database and returns a short URL such as http://tinyurl.com/dmsfm. If the URL has already been requested, TinyURL will return the existing alias rather than creating a duplicate entry. The shorter URL is forwarded to the longer one.
Short URL aliases are seen as useful because they're easier to write down, remember or pass around, are less error-prone to write, and also fit where space is limited such as IRC channel topics or email signatures. Also some email clients impose a maximum length at which they automatically break lines requiring the user to paste together a long URL rather than just clicking on it. A short URL alias is much less likely to become broken.
[edit] Criticism
The convenience offered by a TinyURL also introduces potential problems, which have led to criticism of the use of TinyURLs.
TinyURLs are opaque, hiding the ultimate destination from a web user. This can be used to unwittingly send people to sites that offend their sensibilities, or crash or compromise their computer using browser vulnerabilities. To help combat such abuse, TinyURL allows a user to set a cookie-based preference such that TinyURL stops at the TinyURL website, giving a preview of the final link, when that user clicks TinyURLs. Substituting preview.tinyurl.com for tinyurl.com in the URL is another way of stopping at a preview of the final link before clicking through to it.
Opaqueness is also leveraged by spammers, who can use such links in spam (mostly blog spam), bypassing URL blacklists.
TinyURLs also introduce a dependency on a third-party service that may change, go away, or maintain privacy-compromising logs of user activity indefinitely.
These and other potential problems with TinyURLs have led some corporations to block access to TinyURLs.
www.tinyurl.com
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