Typing a tweet and watching the ubiquitous characters-you-have-left counter fall is like being in one of those movie scenarios where the walls of a room slowly close in on the hero. The closer you get to zero, the more tense you feel, and the more pressure there is to escape before it’s too late!
One of the more common Twitter conundrums occurs when you write an admirably concise-but- coherent tweet, see that you’ve still got 25 or so characters to spare, breathe a sigh of relief, and then realize you still have to include a 75-character Web address. Doh! The solution is to knock that address down to size using a URL-shortening service. This is a Web site (usually; there are programs and plug-ins available, too) that accepts any Web address, no matter how long, and reduces it to a much shorter URL that’s almost always less than two dozen characters (and often under 20).
For example, consider the following address (this book’s Amazon.com page, actually):
http://www.amazon.com/Twitter-Tips-Tricks-Tweets-McFedries/dp/0470529695/
This is a 73-character address, which isn’t super long by modern Web standards, but it would still use up over half your tweet allotment. When I ran this address through the URL-shortening machine at bit.ly (http://bit.ly/), I ended up with this:
http://bit.ly/ieXOl
The bit.ly service (like all URL shorteners) generates a random string of letters and numbers (usually five characters, but sometimes as few as four), and associates the resulting short address with the original address. When someone surfs to the shortened URL, bit.ly (or whatever) looks up the associated original URL and then redirects the Web browser to that address. Best of all, because the shortened address consists of (in this case) a mere 19 characters, you’ve just awarded yourself an extra 54 characters to (in this case) praise the book!
The clash between the immovable object of Twitter’s 140-character limit and the irresistible force of people tweeting links to interesting and fun Web sites has created a boom in the URL-shortening business. Hundreds of services have sprung up, seemingly overnight, and it’s now quite the cottage industry. That’s great, but how on Earth are you supposed to choose which service to use?
In some cases the answer is you don’t have to. Many third-party Twitter tools come with built-in connections to URL shorteners, so you just type your address, click Shorten (or whatever), and away you go. Some, like TweetDeck and twhirl, actually offer multiple shortening services, which narrows things down, but still forces you to make a choice. If you don’t like any of the services offered, or if you use the Twitter Web site to post and so don’t have direct access to URL shortening, then you must find your own.
The Twitter Web site doesn’t have a URL-shortening feature on its interface, but it does shorten URLs. If you post a tweet that includes a regular Web address, Twitter will often shorten that address using the TinyURL service (http://tinyurl.com/).
To help you decide, here are a few things to look for in a URL-shortening service:
Short domain name. This is probably the most important and the most obvious trait to look for. Clearly a service named, say, getyoururlshortenedheredude.com just isn’t going to help all that much. The best sites have truly tiny domain names, from tinyurl.com (ironically, one of the longer names in this field) to is.gd (a five-character domain name such as this is the shortest possible name).
Custom short code. The four- and five-character codes generated by URL-shortening services aren’t particularly memorable or informative. One of the signs of a good shortener is that it gives you the option to specify your own code. For example, if you want to share a link to your cubic zirconia jewelry auction on eBay, you could use, say, TinyURL to create a short address that’s easy to remember (for example, http://tinyurl. com/cubicz) or informative (for example, http://tinyurl.com/CubicZirconiaAuction).
Link preview. Many people are paranoid about shortened URLs because they give no indication of what lurks on the business end of the link. Hackers who have gone over to the dark side of the force often use short URLs to lure the unsuspecting into malicious sites. Less darkly, the site could be one known for excessive pop-ups, overuse of Flash and other media, or other annoying features. A good URL-shortening service will offer some way for users to preview the original address before actually going there. For example, is.gd (http://is.gd/) lets you preview a link by adding a hyphen (-) after the shortened URL.
Statistics. How do you know if people are clicking your tweet links like crazy or ignoring them with a vengeance? The truth is, you don’t. You may be able to tease some numbers out of your Web server log if you’re linking to your own site (which just sounds like way too much work), and you’re completely in the dark when it comes to links to other sites. Many URL-shortening services offer link statistics (they often call them analytics) that tell you (at the very least) how many times your short URL has been used. Stat geeks love sites such as cli.gs (http://cli.gs/) that offer reams of numbers: total hits, hits by day, hits by country, and more.