Have you ever wondered where those short URL's on twitter and email come from? You know the ones I'm talking about. They look like http://bit.ly/h5dxLE or http://tiny.cc/99yso. You may also know that clicking on one of these takes you to a completely different web site, for example the links above both connected to http://www.smallcompanytech.com.
The shortened URL can be used in email, blogs, Facebook, Twitter, or anywhere you might use the regular URL. The only disadvantage is the URL doesn't usually indicate where you are going to end up. The two services I have used both offer a customization feature to allow you to customize the "hash" or the letters and numbers that follow the address of the company offering the service. I customized the URL's above to http://tiny.cc/smcotech or http://bit.ly/smcotech.
The shortened version of my URL doesn't save much space but if you would like to share a link to a book you are reading and it looks like http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1416549005?ie=UTF8&tag=my0b5-20&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=1416549005. Then http://tiny.cc/zuhbs or http://amzn.to/hitOqf look pretty good.
The two services I have found are tiny.cc and bit.ly. They both have similar features with a few notable differences. One can be seen in the shortened amazon links above. The bit.ly service has acquired several shortened domain names they use in place of the usual http://bit.ly/ in this case http://amzn.to tells a reader they are headed for an Amazon link. I also created http://linkd.in/edgart at bit.ly which links to my Linked In account.
There is another feature of bit.ly to consider if you use twitter. Several twitter clients support using a special code generated by the bit.ly site when you setup your account. That way you don't have to give the software your username and password to have URLs included in your tweets automatically shortened and linked to your bit.ly account.
At the time this article was written bit.ly is experimenting with a Pro version of their service. This adds the ability for you to dedicate a domain or subdomain to your shortened links. I acquired the domain ewt.me for this purpose. Now I can "sign" my short URLs with my initials and a really short domain name. The Pro accounts are free while the product is in beta.
Both sites promise to keep your link stored indefinitely so you can give out the link without fear that it will be changed to a different site. Both sites offer statistic tracking so you can see how many people click on your links. This can be useful in your business if you are trying to measure the effectiveness of a social media campaign.
Google has a URL shortener at http://goo.gl. It is pretty basic now, so you might just keep an eye on it. The link to this site came out as http://goo.gl/4eKZi.
What is your favorite URL shortener?
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