bit.ly – In a social media world nearly saturated with URL shorteners, bit.ly has found a way to differentiate itself from the multitude of other options. The first advantage of using bit.ly is that it uses a small number of characters in its custom URLs. This allows users to maximize their 140-character allotment in Twitter posts. But to take advantage of the best services that bit.ly has to offer, you need to sign up for a free account. With an account, users can keep a history of created links with a running total of clicks to each link that was shortened. You can also link your bit.ly account with your Twitter account. This allows you to post tweets from the bit.ly site without having to copy/paste the shortened URL into another site.
There are also two bookmarks that users can drag to the bookmark toolbar in their browser. These add a level of convenience that most other shorteners do not offer. The two bookmarks are “Shorten with bit.ly” and “bit.ly Sidebar,” and they work like this:
- “Shorten with bit.ly” – When clicking on this bookmark from any site that you want to share, a new tab/page opens in your browser with the custom link already created. From this page, you can post to Twitter or just copy the URL to use however you please.
- “bit.ly Sidebar” – When visiting any site, this sidebar gives you a new custom URL, allows you to tweet right from that site, and also gives stats on how many clicks to that site have come from bit.ly links that already exist. If visiting a site for which you have already created a custom link, the current total of clicks from your link is also displayed.
