In this tutorial, I’m going to talk about shortening the URLs. Sometimes, URLs can be too long to fit into your twitter updates. In that case, you will need to shorten them so that you can associate more text with it. There are few services which will allow you to shorten your link/URL. In my view, among all, 4 are best. They are:
| bit.ly |
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| tiny.cc |
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| ow.ly |
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| is.gd |
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I consider these four services when it comes to shortening my links because they are smart and efficient.
In order to test them, I used link to homepage of Dixplore blog which is at http://dixplore.blogspot.com/index.html
Bit.ly shortened my URL to 20 characters as http://bit.ly/9Ftqf5 and I’m quite satisfied with that because it actually compressed my 39 character home page URL. However, If I want to check my stats for bit.ly url or If I want to check number of people who actually clicked the bit.ly url, then I’ll have to sign up for that and that’s what I really don’t like about this service.
Tiny.cc did the same as bit.ly but in tiny.cc I can use my own custom URL which sounds great to me. So, I gave it a try and after several attempts, I finally compressed my home page URL to 17 characters (http://tiny.cc/zj)! However, for custom URL, you will have to make lot of attempts because there may be a case where the URL might be taken by someone else. Another good thing about this service is that it keeps track of the URLs that you have shortened and thus making it easier for future access. However, I think analyzing the URLs might also need signing up.
Ow.ly was great because it automatically shortened the URL to 18 characters without any kind of customization and just for that reason, I prefer it more. However, you will need to pass a captcha in order to shorten a URL and that might seem annoying if you have to shorten too many URLs.
Is.gd is great if you want fast short URLs because it’s low graphics web page makes it load faster and since you don’t have to pass any captcha, the process gets even faster than others. Like Ow.ly, Is.gd automatically shortened my URL to 18 characters and It even shows that it made my URL 21 characters (54%) shorter!
All these service work great for twitter users and is must for those who share their websites with other people on twitter.
