Link shortening

[Dimitri]

I've only recently started using this and I understand there's a lot of sites that can shorten links. My question is what are the differences. Do some sites give shorter links or what?

I know some shorten links and then put an ad in so that when you click you're temporarily routed to an ad, is that the only difference?

 

[beers]

Depends on the shortener, most of them just obfuscate what you're really going to be visiting.

These days there's no real reason to not use the full URL

 

[Cromewell]

http://tinyurl.com/4poyc6x

You can do lots of things with link shorteners, some will use it to generate affiliate revenue ie if I click a link to amazon on some site and buy something on it, the site that referred me might be able to earn some minor income on it.

 

[johnb35]

Mostly they are available for clickable income. No real advantage to using them unless you are a spammer. Makes you take an extra step or two to create the new link. Why not just do it once?

 

[Dimitri]

I will be doing community management, that's why I need them shortened, because of Twitter character limitations, but also because shorter links look better in social media posts.

That's why I'm wondering what the differences are.

Do some places shorten links to a greater degree than others?

Do different places give you a different form of the link?

 

[Cromewell]

Every place will give you a link shortened in their own way. Functionally it should be nearly transparent to end users - with the exception of the intrusive forms that inject an intermediate page with ads and the like on it.

 

[Agent Smith]

I will be doing community management, that's why I need them shortened, because of Twitter character limitations, but also because shorter links look better in social media posts.

That's why I'm wondering what the differences are.

Do some places shorten links to a greater degree than others?

Do different places give you a different form of the link?

Doesn't Twitter have their own shortner? It's t.co

 

[Cromewell]

Doesn't Twitter have their own shortner? It's t.co

It sure does.

https://support.twitter.com/articles/109623

 

[Dimitri]

Doesn't Twitter have their own shortner? It's t.co

Hmm, I googled it and it says that it works automatically, whenever you post a link on Twitter it will automatically shorten it and it DOES shorten links when I post them, but not into any t.co form.

For ex. when I tweet a link to this thread it shows up like this in a tweet: (it just removed the http://www.)

computerforum.com/threads/link-shortening.242481/ …