Creating a short URL for Twitter and other social media uses

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We’re often asked by our trainees and clients how to make a long web address into one of those very short ones that are easier to post on Twitter – or any other socal networking website that has  limitations on the number of characters.  Often the URL or web address of a web page is too long to fit into the 140 characters of a Twitter post (tweet).

There are a variety of services that provide this function. One, tr.im, recently described the problems it faces in providing this service.  bit.ly is the service that Twitter.com prefers, and if you use an add-in such as PowerTwitter, it may autmatically shorten your URL for you.

Here’s an example: a YouTube URL isn’t particularly long but can still be more than you’d like, i.e., http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EIBh1Bvv90c (42 characters)

is longer than

http://tinyurl.com/dzs6g5 (25 characters)

In this case we’ll use the tinyURL website:

1. Copy your long URL, e.g., from the URL box next to a Youtube video

2. Go to tinyurl.com and paste your URL into the box as below:

TinyURL

3. Click “Make TinyURL”
and your shorter URL will be generated as below

TinyURL

You can now use this shorter URL to post on Twitter or anywhere else. (Copy and paste…)

    Originally published on reachfurther.com

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