Before I go into this blog post, it should be obvious that I not only have a new design, but a new host.  I have decided to host my blog at WordPress.com.  I won’t go into the reasons why, but it was a switch that had to be made.  So, for today’s post I am going to talk about the web address shortening service Bit.ly.  What is that you ask?  Basically, Bit.ly and a few others like it, attempt to take those super long links that you used to see on the web (e.g. a long address like http://maps.google.com/maps?f=d&saddr=New+York+Penn+Station&daddr=9th+Ave+%26+14th+St,+New+York,+NY&hl=en&geocode=&mra=ls&dirflg=r&date=11%2F12%2F08&time=4:13pm&ttype=dep&noexp=0&noal=0&sort=&sll=40.746175,-73.998395&sspn=0.014468,0.036392&ie=UTF8&z=14 can now be shortened to this…http://bit.ly/CUjV).  It is a pretty straight forward and simple goal.  Bit.ly in particular was designed for Twitter.  If you think about it, Twitter allows only 140 characters in their posts.  So a long web address link in twitter could take up the entire post.  Having a shorter web address that gets you to the same web page is a much easier way to save space for the important info you want to convey on your Twitter post.

What Bit.ly soon realized is that their service could be taken globally and that many people, and other websites, would be interested in their shortening service.  Right now, you my friends, can go to Bit.ly and take any web link and shorten it.  That shortened link will remain unique to your long link forever.  You can email links, IM links, post links on web pages and blogs, and even text or SMS shortened links.  Any public web address can be shortened and all addresses can be shortened by more than one person.  Bit.ly will keep track and will still assign a unique address for the same long public address.

Once you sign up with Bit.ly, which is free, and you create a shortened link, you can then track the link.  Once you put the link out there on the web, you can track information such as: Clicks, Totals Clicks (if it is a long link that is common to a public page that more than one person has shortened), Social networking info like: tweets, Facebook shares, FriendFeed, and comments.  It will also show you where traffic is from and where the referring pages are from.

If you are a web builder or host, you can private label Bit.ly and create your own shortening service within your domain.  So, WordPress, the company that is hosting this blog, has created a shortening service for its blog members using Bit.ly.  My blog’s long web address is adamrubinger.wordpress.com.   It’s short web address is http://wp.me/TOPH.  Besides Bit.ly, there are a number of other services out there that basically do the same thing: tinlyurl, notlong.com, short.url, smal.ly and many, many others.  Do a google search for URL Shortening services and you can come up with hundreds.

So, I am sure this is very fascinating to you all, but what does this really do for you?  If you are a web builder or spend a lot of time copying links and sending them in either emails or posting them in message boards, you might find Bit.ly helpful. Facebook and Twitter already utilize Bit.ly so you need not worry.   Go ahead and give Bit.ly a try the next time you want to copy a web pages address.