I remember my first experience with a URL shortener. While browsing a thread on a popular forum about Ultimate Frisbee, my sport of choice during college, I came across a post linking to an older discussion on the same topic. But I hesitated when I noticed the link was to something called TinyURL.com with a few numbers and letters after the slash. Where is this going to take me? I hope it’s not spam, I thought before I clicked through. When I landed safely on the old thread, I quickly put two and two together: this is some sort of service that makes http://groups.google.com/group/rec.sport.disc/browse_thread/thread/c0fa74cf7c46cd57# appear as http://tinyurl.com/2ace2bt. But why?

Just a few years (and over 100 different URL shorteners) later, there are more answers to that question than most healthcare marketers can keep up with.

For the average consumer, the most popular and practical use for these shortening services is to fit links into Twitter posts. With a 140 character limit, posting a link with 80-100 characters seriously handicaps the tweeter’s ability to post his thoughts. The improved aesthetic quality, as demonstrated above, is another popular reason to shorten a URL. When posting on a forum or in the comments section of a blog, where in-text linking is often not available, using a shortened URL gives your post a cleaner look that is more pleasing to the eye of the reader.

But what separates the different shortening services, and why is it important for healthcare marketers to choose the right shortener? The number one thing that public relations professionals have to answer for with any social media campaign is still ROI. The popular Twitter client HootSuite provides stats through its proprietary short link ow.ly. Any link posted with HootSuite is automatically converted to the ow.ly format, and stats are kept for each tweet that is sent out. Bit.ly, the most popular service with 3.4 billion links created in March of this year, has developed a fairly robust measurement system. As discussed in a past Word of the Week feature, with a free account, bit.ly users can keep up with the number of clicks that each created link has received. The service is also integrated with Twitter, which allows users to see each time the link is tweeted and retweeted. Your boss is bound to be less skeptical about Twitter when you let him know how many page views one tweet can generate, in addition to regular traffic.

If a company can successfully carve out a creative niche on the social Web, it immediately has a leg up on the competition. TinyURL gives users a simple way to achieve this. Instead of using the randomly generated sequence of numbers and letters, users can create a custom name for their link. For example, check out http://tinyurl.com/dodgepr!

Some companies have taken the next step when it comes to URL customization. If you follow the New York Times Twitter feed, you’ve noticed their custom nyti.ms URL format. Companies such as Amazon (amzn.to), YouTube (youtu.be) and CNN (on.cnn.com) have also taken the leap into URL customization. In addition to the obvious advantages in integrated marketing and branding that this presents, it is also a way to reduce the creation of spam links. While a bit.ly link could take a Web surfer just about anywhere, you can be confident that a nyti.ms URL will lead to a safe destination and an interesting piece of news. There are a couple services out there that allow anyone to get in on URL customization. Awe.sm can be used for free as a traditional shortener, but starting at $99 a year, the service also hosts custom URLs and provides stats through Google Analytics. Bit.ly is also getting into the custom URL business with bitly.Pro, which is still in beta.

Regarding the title question, it appears that the revolution is still going strong. As long as Twitter keeps growing, the demand for short links will continue to exist. But the folks at Twitter recognize this, as evidenced by last month’s announcement that the company will be launching its own URL shortener. According to the company, “forcing [users] to leave twitter.com to shorten a link is absurd.” Some speculate that bit.ly could be acquired by Twitter, while others feel that the most likely candidate for the job is Twitter’s own twt.tl, which is currently being used to secure links sent via direct message in light of recent phishing scams. Could this signal the end of an apparently thriving revolution?

Once this transition is complete (and assuming that Twitter stays in-house with its choice of link), it’s likely that only a handful of other shortening services will survive. Bit.ly, with its popularity and upcoming Pro offering, ow.ly, with its inclusion in the popular HootSuite client, and TinyURL, with its reputation as the original, all stand a good chance of survival, but the hundreds of other services out there may have finally met their match.