When 140 Doesn’t Cut It: Ways to Shorten a URL on Twitter
Introduction
Sharing links is a vital aspect of Twitter that bloggers use every day. It is a great way to spread your content, and when done properly can expand readership, build brand, and provide value for your followers. Since sharing links can be so important, it is important that you use the right URL Shortner at the right time.
URL Shortner? What’s That?
Twitter only allows you 140 characters for you to get your message across. Since you are promoting a link, you will want all the room you can get for “the pitch.” Some links can be rather large(even 140 characters themselves) and the solution to this is a URL shortner. A URL shortner will take your existing link and convert it into a nice, clean package that is far shorter in terms of characters.
Examples of URL Shortners
Tinyurl
is.gd
snurl
Not Long
Tweetburner
When to Use Tiny URL
Tiny URL is most likely the most branded URL Shortner around. Twitter uses tinyurl as their default URL shortner, and thus, most of your readers will probably recognize tinyurl over all the other options. If you have the room to fit a slightly longer link, then use Tiny URL.
When to Use is.gd
is.gd is less known than tinyurl, but in my opinion it does the job better. I mean when it comes down to it, tinyurl.com has 11 characters, and is.gd only has 5. Those 6 characters are important! The only downside to is.gd is that it doesn’t have a .com associated to it, and sometimes followers may not understand or even be afraid of is.gd. I wouldn’t use is.gd unless you desperately need the extra characters (which does happen from time to time).
When to Use Snurl
Snurl is a great URL shortner and is the default url shortner of the popular twitter desktop application Twhirl. If you are a user of Twhirl, using Snurl is EXTREMELY easy and highly recommended!
When to Use NotLong
Not Long is an interesting service because all the other shortners on this list randomly generate your links while Not Long allows you to name/brand your links.
For example, if your blog post is about tips for increasing RSS subscriptions, your link could be: “increasing-rss-readers.notlong.com” or something to that extent.
If you don’t need much room to pitch, I would highly recommend using notlong to brand your links with vital information about your blog post.
When to Use Tweetburner
Tweetburner is interesting because it tracks clicks. If you have a link that you feel will be clicked on a lot, then you may want to use tweetburner for it’s marketing purpose. On the front page of tweetburner there is a list of top 10 links of the hour, you may be able to pick up a few extra eyeballs if your link is popular enough to crack the top 10.
Conclusion
URL Shortner’s are a blogger’s best friend. Amazingly enough there are certain situations where certain services work best. I highly recommend testing out all the URL shortners and tracking results; remember that a certain readership may respond to a certain shortner!
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April 17th, 2008 at 11:22 am
Aj, another great post for someone that wants to squeeze as much info in those 140 characters.
Keep up the great work homie!
April 17th, 2008 at 2:34 pm
I’m SUCH a Twitter junkie that is.gd is like the pure, uncut stuff for me
But I never thought about the trusting it enough to click factor. Besides, the idea of Tweetburner’s tracking, etc. is awesome to me and I’d never heard about it. So thanks!
April 17th, 2008 at 3:40 pm
Another one of those is http://icanhaz.com/. It allows you to name your link too.
One thing you didn’t mention is how short urls are breaking the web. When the service goes away, all the link on twitter using that service are dead. And, as you showed, twitter has a LOT of google juice.
“Won’t happen” you say? Where is urltea? http://urltea.com/ - GONE.
April 17th, 2008 at 5:03 pm
Great list, AJ! I’ll have to try out a few of these when I get the chance.
Personally, I use moourl.com; it works (my previous favourites URLtea and tweetl no longer function) and also has the option to personalise the URL. It also automatically adds the generated URL to your clipboard (saving a couple of clicks/seconds).
April 18th, 2008 at 3:29 pm
Snurl.com (which also goes by the names Snipurl.com and Snipr.com) also tracks clicks, although in order for click tracking to work you have to be logged in to their website (all you need, though, IIRC, is a username and password), so that may not work with Twhirl. It’s been around a very long time, it’s got a great link management website for registered users, it’s very feature-rich, there’s ongoing development, and they even give good support if you run into problems. I highly recommend them.
August 9th, 2008 at 2:41 pm
Another website is http://www.tinyurls.org