People like to share! These days it’s so easy to just copy a URL and share it on Facebook, Twitter, via e-mail or instant message. But the downside to this is that some services limit you to a certain amount of characters. In plain words - your choice of URL could just be too long!
This is where URL shortening services are very handy.
Ever seen links in your news feeds containing “bit.ly”, “goo.gl”, “ow.ly” or “tinyurl”? Those URLs appear because the person posting it made use of an URL shortening service.
The Technical Bit (and Bit.ly)
Are you not sure what an URL is? An URL is also known as an “uniform resource locator” – but that’s the fancy name. Do you know that every web address you visit has an unique numerical value? For example: 72.14.207.44. Would you believe me if I told you that this is probably one of the most-visited websites in the world? But not all of us are number people - those numbers are what you’ll type as http://www.google.com. And that is the URL - much easier, don’t you think?
URLs like those of Google are short in comparison to what you can get on the World Wide Web. Some images or media can have extremely long URLs.
Here’s an example:
That’s a link to an album on Facebook, but it would be too long to use on Twitter, or in an instant message (such as BBM or a SMS).
This is what it looks like after using an URL shortener:
Would you rather click on the longer or shorter version?
URL shorteners ultimately reduce something that can take up a lot of character space, into anything from four to eleven characters. Some of these tools also provide you with a way to keep track of statistics on your links, if you are interested in knowing if people view what you share. Some of the services can even provide information on the countries that the links were visited from!
5 Popular URL Shorteners
- Bit.ly – You can sign up for the service by providing a username, email address and password. After registration, you can also log in with your Twitter account, and share links from the bit.ly website. It also provides an option for vanity URLs, where you can use a custom URL, for example http://bit.ly/YourAlias or even http://YourAlias/linkname. It also provides statistics on your posted links.
- Ow.ly – You can immediately sign up with your Twitter account and start sharing links, or media, like images or documents. This service is integrated into HootSuite if you use it. Also has a vanity URL option.
- Goo.gl – Google’s very own URL shortening tool. Log in with your Google account, and have access to tracking and statistics of your shared links.
- TinyURL - Also used by Twitter to shorten URLs, there’s no sign up required, and you can create a custom alias for your links. For example http://tinyurl.com/YourAlias. If that specific name is taken, you will be notified.
- Deck.ly – This service is part of TweetDeck, built for longer tweets. It can only be used through the client itself.
All of the above URL shorteners (except deck.ly) have a text field where you can copy your long URL into, and it will shorten it for you. They’re also really easy and straightforward to use.
There are many other services out there, but the ones I have mentioned have been around for quite some time, so your links should survive… thus meaning that you won’t have “dead” links in earlier materials like tweets or blog posts. That could be because the service is down, undergoing maintenance or simply stopped operating. They should work again when the service is back up. In the case of a discontinued service, unless another one takes control, your links will not be usable anymore.
Vanity URLs?
Typically, URL shorteners make up a random path for your URLs — those /9G1 or /ge05y5 and other boring sounding names you’ve seen. Some of them (like HootSuite and Bit.ly) allow you to override this, so that your path can have a “custom” or “vanity” ending. That means you can have a custom name for your URL
When not using a vanity URL, the web tool you are making use of, will generate numbers and characters that will point to the longer link that you entered into the field. This means that people won’t always know what they click on, or will be seeing when the page finishes loading - especially if you do not add a description that accompanies it.
- It would display as follows: http://tinyurl.com/y8ufsnp
TinyURL has a preview function that you can use, to share content or media with confidence.
- This is the example with the preview: http://preview.tinyurl.com/y8ufsnp
For your own safety, and that of others, remember to only click on links from people you know and trust. 
