

What is the use of Url shortners? - panchpunt

I want to understand the significance of Url shortning websites and short url besides their use in micro-blogging sites and advertising/campaigning.
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sim0n
When services like Twitter limit your messages to 140 characters, you don't
want to waste 50 characters on a long URL (e.g.
<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2547123>) when instead you could create a
short(er) 10 character URL instead using a service like bit.ly, etc.

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endergen
The biggest benefit is that you can track how many people clicked on a link.
That way users know which share links were popular. And for URL shortening
sites themselves they get even better analytics where they get in real time
all the popular shared links.

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lukeqsee
1\. Allow companies to scan content and verify it is safe.

2\. Allow companies/people to "brand" links (I guess this is advertising, to
an extent).

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panchpunt
You may be right. But I'm not quite getting you. How bit.ly or
<http://bit.ly/dfMsd> will allow companies to scan content or brand links

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Thomaschaaf
Just add the + at the end to see stats: <http://bit.ly/dfMsd+>

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jesstaa
url shortener are useful for any time you need to send a link in text form.
Most sites are terrible at making good urls, and tend to make them huge and
complicated. URL shortener help with that. url shorteners are also fairly bad
for the web and should be avoided in all cases where you have another option.

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Mz
The use I am familiar with: If you post a very long URL in an email and send
it to a group, it often will not work for the receivers because it is broken
up onto two lines. Lots of people aren't web-savvy enough copy and paste both
pieces and for those who are that savvy it's a hug nuisance. So a URL
shortener makes it much more likely that people will go read whatever you
posted by removing those issues. I shared a URL shortening service with
someone who routinely posted articles to a list we both belonged to and she
was thrilled to pieces and has used it consistently ever since.

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gcb
goatse

