Do you think that long links are annoying?

Sep 1st, 10
  • Do you use twitter? Or any other service of its type that has a limit when the number of letters is in question? Most of us do. Our statements must be short, but  that isn’t a problem, we encounter a problem when we want to share a link.
  • Links that lead directly to the root are acceptable, for example: http://fpx-studio.com .
    But what if you want to share an article that is not on the index page?
    For example:  http://fpx-studio.com/2010/08/25/silent-mode/ this link has 45 characters and it is already a problem. And, you are aware that some links are much longer.
  • Fortunately people have come up with URL shortening. URL shortening  is a technique on the World Wide Web in which a URL may be made substantially shorter in length. This involves using an HTTP Redirect on a domain name that is short to link to a website which has a long URL.
  • Sounds complicated? In fact it is very easy thanks to services like bit.ly.
    bit.ly allows me to shorten my link ,from the giant above, to this http://bit.ly/SilentMode in just a few seconds. It doesn’t require you to register and it’s 100% free. If you register you can check statistics for the links you’ve shortened, registration is also free of charge. In addition it offers you to costumize your new links.
  • There is a bunch of other services that are ,more or less, doing the same thing as bit.ly. You only need to determine which one suits you best. For example, you can see in the upper right corner of this post there are a “tweet” and “facebook share”  buttons that are using shar.es to make a link to this post shorter.
  • These services are really great and I am glad that they exist. If you are choosing a service of this type that you plan to use, be sure to check does it works well and is it fast enough. I personally recommend using bit.ly.
bit.ly

bit.ly

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