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It’s All About URL Shortening!

By: James Squires

Short URLs are very helpful for micro-blogging in social networking sites like Twitter, Facebook etc. They are just the short forms of the long and unwieldy web addresses. The short links are easy to recall and share. They are easier to embed on an email message as they do not get broken into pieces. A short link also helps a webmaster to conceal their affiliate ID.

Now how URL shorteners work? You can do link shortening yourself by following some steps that includes pasting a specific script in your web server. But you can make the shortening process absolutely hassle-free by subscribing to the services of online third party professionals. You can log into their website and paste your long URL in the required field that is displayed there. The short URL will be generated in a while. Some of service providers cater such services for free and in some case you have to pay a fee.

Now there are a plethora of link shortening services that are available. You have to select which one to go for. This will again depend on your requirements. But before you go for one check their reputation and track records. The corrupt service providers can interleave an ad between the link and your webpage. They can also direct he link to a porn website. So beware of such service givers.

Now if you are regular Twitter or Facebook user and looking for URL shortening service to make your micro-blogging easier then look for service that is well compatible to such social networking tools. There are websites that allows you to log in with your Twitter user account to use their services instead of requiring you to generate a new user name and password.

There are URL shorteners that provide such services with tracking. They monitor as to who clicked on your shortened links and allow you reporting options. Many link shorteners also create short links to documents, videos and images that are stored in your personal computer. So beside the link shortening service you are also getting a simple file sharing service.

But the bottom-line to subscribe to such services is to check and re-check the credibility of the provider. For instance, if the company is not likely to be in business for long, then your links will get disrupted as soon as they close down.

However, using shortened links have certain demerits as well. The first and foremost is the risk of broken link. They can easily be manipulated. These URLS give you no idea as to where you are being directed. So if you clicked the link to access a particular portal you may be taken to a completely different webpage. But if there is trouble there are remedies too. To handle such challenges, solutions are being invented from time to time for the convenience of internet users. Short link previewers and filters are some of them. The mechanism of link shortening is here to stay, as a result more features of this process and many more security provisions will come up in future.

Article Source: http://articlesltd.com

James Squires is the author of this article on Url shortener with tracking. Find more information about URL Shortening here.

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