A few years ago, most Tweeters knew at least one or two different URL shortener sites. They were a necessity, to squeeze in a longer tweet. These days, they’re not needed so much but are still useful to make links look a little neater.
The three shorteners that most people are using at the moment are
When your Blogger post autotweets, it probably does so with a goo.gl link. ow.ly is mostly used by Hootsuite users, and bit.ly is a more general one, but often seen to disguise rewardStyle links.
To create a shortened link, head to your chosen site, enter your URL where required, and copy the link that’s generated. Seriously easy!
It’s possible to set up your own URL shortener, which we’ll cover in a future post, for which you’ll need a short URL (easier than it sounds!) For most users though, the standard link is good enough.
Want to know a super awesome (and easy!) trick to make sure you’re not being sent anywhere dodgy by a goo.gl or bit.ly link? Copy the link and paste it into your browser, but add a + (plus sign) to the end of the URL (so http://bit.ly/1srJwhz becomes http://bit.ly/1srJwhz+. This didn’t work with ow.ly links when tested, annoyingly! If you’re interested in who’s clicking your links, you can log into most of the sites, but the + trick also provides that information – useful if you don’t want to log in, or if you’ve forgotten your details.
Shortening Links http://t.co/pCZkfIPMJE via @bonjourblogger