Pearson Pipeline

Long, unwieldy URLs have always been a pain to share with others. They are prone to errors (especially when they stretch over several lines and you happen to accidentally omit characters). And good luck in trying to retype one! Also, Twitter’s 140 character message limit makes it even more challenging to share a long link.

URL shorteners are a quick and easy solution for squeezing long URLs into tweets, e-mails, PowerPoint presentations and more. Consider this complex 82-character URL to a Time magazine article on the Time.com Web site:

http://www.time.com/time/specials/packages/article/0,28804,1901188_1901207,00.html

It’s intimidating to say the least and breaks into two lines. Now, look at the link below created using TinyURL, one of many URL shorteners:

http://tinyurl.com/nh3kky

Much better isn’t it? And it will take you to the exact page on the Time.com Web site. Some popular URL shorteners are:

Bit.ly
Cl.igs
Short.ie
Snipurl
TinyURL

Want to read more? Check out this chart at:
http://searchengineland.com/analysis-which-url-shortening-service-should-you-use-17204

Hmmmm…let’s try that again:
http://snipurl.com/vfq0y

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