What is the meaning of 'tinyurl' in a URL address?

TinyURL.com is a free service that converts a long URL into a short one. For example, the URL of this question is http://wiki.answers.com/Q/What_is_the_meaning_of_'tinyurl'_in_a_URL_address, and TinyURL has converted it to http://tinyurl.com/4qcgzg

Going to http://tinyurl.com/4qcgzg will redirect the browser to http://wiki.answers.com/Q/What_is_the_meaning_of_'tinyurl'_in_a_URL_address without the user noticing.

One of the uses for it is sending URLs by email. Long URLs often get cut off at the line break and become useless. TinyURL prevents this from happening. There are other similar services available such as oxyz.info

metamark.net

notlong.com

fff.to

bit.ly

is.gd

etc