Features:

• follow @birdhive on Twitter then submit links via @reply or DM
• message to @birdhive must contain at least one URL (shortened)
• if @birdhive approves the link it will be displayed at birdhive.net
• bookmarklet available

The Good:

@birdhive is a great way to share links about creative projects you come across on Twitter (or elsewhere). The mechanism for delivering links is easy to use and the display of tweets at birdhive.net looks good. You can also retweet or get a link to displayed tweets.

The Not-so-Good:

@birdhive is in its very early stages right now, so it needs time to grow and become more popular. The developers seem on top of things and prepared to make modifications as necessary.

Tweetwave.com rates it: ♦♦♦

Features:

• all that is required is a Twitter account, no registration or password needed
• tweet your favorite links using special commands and they show up in Twimbler

The Good:

Twimbler is a tumblelog which cascades “favorited” links and a short description of them. If you enjoy being awash in seemingly randomly generated links, then Twimbler is for you.

The Not-so-Good:

Frankly, the utility of Twimbler is rather limited. There are no configuration or search features, so viewers are stuck with whatever happens along. For Twimbler to capture the links you want to “share” you have to tweet them using a specific command (example given is #log: http://twimbler.com OMG! I’m trying twimble! ftw.).

Tweetwave.com rates it: ★

Features:

• easy link shrinking
• one-click bookmarklet
• link management with custom notes about placement
• reporting on historical link usage, referrers and click counts

The Good:

BudURL offers a high level of analytics for link tracking. Link usage can be tracked by source, type, browser, date, keyword and more. Lovely graphs are provided for visual learners. Real-time statistics are also available. The ability to attach custom notes to each link stored is a fantastic  feature.

The Not-so-Good:

Only two things really stick in the “Not-so-Good” category for Bud URL. The first is that in addition to referring URLs showing on the tracking reports, visitors’ IP addresses are tracked as well. This may give some a pause for concern about privacy. It may not bother others at all.

The second is that like most really good things, BudURL isn’t completely free. There is a free version, but it has limited functionality after 25 URLs are created. There are three paying plans (which, on the upside, are all month-to-month) ranging from $4 per month to $12 per month to $49 per month.

tweetwave.com rates it: ♦♦♦♦

Features:

• easy UI
• choose summarization period (1-24 hours)
• shows thumbnail view of links using snap shots
• ability to tweet a reply
• ability to send links to Instapaper

The Good:

UrlTweets is easy to use and does a great job of helping keep track of the multitude of links that come to your timeline every day. Twitter login info is required, but security issues have been addressed. The ability to send links to Instapaper for later reading is a nice feature.

The Not-so-Good:

There isn’t much not to like about UrlTweets, but for each 200 tweets checked for URLs UrlTweets uses one API call up to a maximum of 10 calls. After 10 calls, however, the pagination is stopped to save API hits so you can check backward up to 2000 tweets in the last 24 hours. UrlTweets is still developing, so more features may come in the future.

tweetwave.com rates it: ♦♦♦

TinyURL is one of several link-shrinking applications available. An easy-to-use bookmarklet is available so you don’t have to keep visiting TinyURL every time you want to shrink a link. ♦♦♦♦