It’s Cool to be Short

Posted on 21 May 2010 | by JR Rozko

Good news for those of us who have ever wasted any time wishing we could be taller.  In case you haven't heard, SHORT IS IN!!  

URL shorteners are all the rage.  Seems like every other day someone else is introducing their own URL shortening service.  If you're not hip to this deal, basically in a world that is asking us to communicate with one another in 140 characters or less, every character counts and that's where URL shorteners come in.  

Facebook has theirs, Google has theirs.  If you use HootSuite, they have two!  You can find a good (and growing) list of URL shorteners here.  If you are in the market (they are all free by the way) for a good URL shortener, I am going to suggest j.mp.  Here's why.

1. It's one of the shortest out there.  I mean, if saving space is the name of the game, then the shorter the better right?  J.mp uses just 4 characters as opposed to 5 or more with other shorteners.

2. It keeps track of the links that you shorten.  You may not be all that concerned about this, but sometimes it's handy to go back and take a peek at a list of the links you are sharing.

3. It will keep track of how many people click on the short URL that you created.  More often than not, you will shorten URL's to share them through Twitter, Facebook, or some other social network that doesn't give you the easy ability to simply hyperlink words.  In that case, it can be helpful to know what kind of action those links you are publishing are getting.

4. It is well integrated with browsers and third-party apps.  J.mp (formerly known as bit.ly - which still works) has add-ons for both Firefox and Chrome.  Many third-party Twitter clients such as my personal favorite, Echofon, come with built-in support.  

5. The developers behind the service seem committed to ongoing development.  Many URL shorteners out there just kind of exist.  They are there, but not really getting any better or adding more functionality.

Unless you do a lot of short-messaging, you may not immediately see the need for regular use of a URL shortening service, but there are some indeed some creative uses.  Here's one of my personal favorites.

Often, when I send out emails, I will include a signature that offers people the opportunity to check out more about me by visiting my blog, projects, or social network profiles.  By creating hyperlinks to these sites through j.mp than then redirect to the appropriate site, I can get a gauge of how often people are actually clicking on these additional links as points of contact.  

That's just one idea.  Anyone out there want to suggest others?