Ever been on twitter and someone you are following tweets and then they have a link below that says Bit.ly and then some weird random letters follow bit.ly?? Ever wonder what that is? Well I did, in fact I was a little bit afraid to click on the link because I thought the person I followed had been hacked, and I didn't want to click the link for fear of getting hacked!
But actually this little guy, but.ly is now my new best friend! Bitly.com is what's considered a URL shortener. So say you want to copy a link to your twitter from an amazing story on espn.com but the URL in itself is so long that it doesn't allow you to express your opinion about that article. Sooooo that's why we have bitly.comat this website you paste a long URL in the box and then bam! Your long link has been shortened to a small bit.ly link easy to copy and paste! Wonderful, wonderful, just wonderful!!!
And just to wrap things up, I learned that. URL shorteners are not just to make things convenient for things such as twitter. But it also is used to beautify a link. And I found that interesting cause it's true. Some links are sooo nasty long and full of equal, and, exclamation, at, and other random signs that just clump things up! This I feel is a great thing! Do people do me a favor and use URL shorteners!
Dueces, Jordan.
Peep these links that I found helpful!
http://bit.ly/htxNX5
http://on.mash.to/XEl0ca
Nice work, Jordan! good point ya bring up, if people's posts or tweets are ugly and cluttery, its annoying. I probably could do better on my own blog. Thanks for the advice!
ReplyDeleteI was wondering what those where also. I didn't understand the URL shorteners very well. I have been tweeting out my blog post and usually the URL is so long I can't say very much about it. I will be using Bit.ly.
ReplyDeleteHaha I thought they were spam, too, for the longest time. You're not the only one!
ReplyDeleteI never thought of a url shortener as a "beautifier." But as I think about it, it totally is. Makes it much nicer to look at. The description and application of url shorteners in your post was very helpful to me too. Thanks Jordan.
ReplyDeleteYou can also choose the letters/numbers after the bit.ly/ part so they are not random and have meaning.
ReplyDeleteIt's an extra feature that makes your links more pertinent and easier to track and keep track of.
I thought the same thing about bit.ly sites when I saw links on Facebook... I thought it looked sketchy and might link out to a virus. Customizing your own bitly address to something that relates to the actual link would welcome wary visitors.
ReplyDelete