What am I not getting about URL shorteners?

Everyone seems to be using them on twitter. You can fairly easily tweet a link without having to use one. By using the shorteners you lose the brand value of not being able to see the domain name, so why use them, besides being able to have more characters for the tweet?

 

I think it's just force of habit, really -- there is no need to use a shortener generally (obviously, if it has some kind of monetisation scheme, or if you own the shortener itself etc. then you have a reason) but for the most part, people still use Bit.ly and the others just out of habit -- especially the better-developed shorteners that have bookmarklets and browser plugins available, where all the user does is clicks on a button on his browser to generate the link without leaving the original page.


Frank

 

Some twitter applications (like TweetDeck) will automatically shorten the links but generally it is for the purpose of giving at least some space for the text

 

For twitter it might be to save space.
For Internet Marketers it is used to hide links (referral/hop link etc).
It can also be used to track how many clicks you got and from what country the clicks came. (bit.ly)
Some URL shorteners also pay you money. (Adf.ly)

 

I love link shorteners. yeah they mask your url, but it also helps out when a link is too large. I usually use the real link when it's short. I like the idea of paid for posting links that were shortened.

 

there is limit character that some website do,.. that why we use shortener link,.. lol

 

I think some folks have reading comprehension problems, and/or don't pay attention to the news. Just a theory.

 

i even think that url shortener is the best thing to use on twitter, cos its paid us... some url shortener even offer much more higher payout rates than the others, like mine

 

Priceless

Anyway, I myself prefer not to use a shortener when writing only the domain name, but it is extremely useful when trying to share something which can be found at a longer address. Is saves a lot of space.

 

You sound like a douche. Maybe because no one really cares about the latest developments with twitter? Just a thought.

 

Shortners usually save the space as in the case of Twitter and in the case of other sites it serves to make the USLs more user and Search Engine friendly.

 

posted by dcristo:

This post was not in reference to your original post, but to the subsequent responses that either didn't understand your question, or (far more likely) didn't read it through in their rush to post a response. However, I myself must have misread the original post -- since you were asking why people were still using URL shorteners on Twitter, I assumed the motivator for that fact was that Twitter for a little while now has been automatically shortening links (and I offered a possible explanation for that in my original, non-douche response.)

Sorry if I came off as being rude to you, or rude in general.


Frank

 

twitter is going to start shortening links themselves using t.co/blah blah blah

 

you can use them, but a lot of the times, you won't have space for anything else. Just tweeting a link is not very effective, as people just ignore it. But with a shortener, you can say "Hey check this costume out" and insert an affiliate link easily...

 

No need to shortners use original url.

 

There is plenty of space to drop a message with an unshortened link.

Since making this thread I discovered twitter now automatically shortens links.

 

I agreed i think it is an habbit

 

Twitter shorten most of urls automatically to give more space for the tweet. But your real domain is covered. This is a kind of problem when it comes to SEO.

 

Yes, twitter shorten urls automatically, see no problem...