If you’ve been following me on Twitter, or if you’re a friend of mine on facebook, you’ve probably noticed that I’ve begun to share the links I share by shortening the address using something beginning with ow.ly/. In this article I would like to share why that is.
If you are asking why I would even want to shorten a URL, the reason for me basically comes down to the 140 character limit of Twitter. Because I use the same tool (I’ll get more into that soon) to broadcast messages to both Twitter AND Facebook, the links I share on both are shortened. SO, as you can see, it’s important for me to preserve all of the space I can, and one way I do that is to shorten the URL.
Why have I recently chosen to go with the URL shortening service Ow.Ly? One reason is because of the tool I use to broadcast my tweets and updates. Not that long ago I did an article for MakeUseOf.com (I’m a staff writer for them) on HootSuite, a web-based Twitter client. Without getting too specific (you can read the post if you want to know more about it) I can now easily follow many different people on Twitter without getting lost in all the noise. I can also post tweets (on Twitter) and updates (on Facebook) through one site. Ow.Ly comes in because HootSuite allows me to easily shorten a URL with the click of the button (you can also use a bookmarklet to share links even easier) using Ow.Ly.
Another cool think about Ow.Ly and HootSuite is that I can see click statistics about the links I share. Very cool stuff, for me at least. Before tools like HootSuite, I would never had gotten into Twitter! I HAVE noticed that recently Twitter seems to be on a push to bring users back to the main site instead of using third party tools like HootSuite. They’re doing this be introducing tools such as ReTweeting from the main page and the new +list features. What do you think about this? What benefits could they have if they achieve it?
Anyways, do you use URL shorteners? How about Twitter? What tools do you use to make Twitter more manageable? What about Facebook?
I’m using and loving Tweetdeck. I liked HootSuite, but TweetDeck works perfectly for me. It autoshortens URLs and makes things quick and easy. If I’m not tweeting it, I go with bit.ly bookmarklet. Very helpful.
For Facebook, I just use Facebook.
Brett Barner´s last blog ..Google Wave and Your Ministry
I used TweetDeck for a bit and it is a very popular solution. My goal when I found HootSuite was to find a web-based solution similar to Tweetdeck and I think HootSuite fits that bill. Now I don’t have to worry about installing a program on any computer I use because all I need is a web-browser!
HootSuite does have its “Hootlet” which is the easy-to-use bookmarklet for easily sharing links!