AskBillFirst – Non-Tech Speak Technology Blog

On occasion, you will need to copy a website address into an email, or even worse, into Twitter. I say worse because Twitter only allows 140 characters and some website addresses that you want to share can take up most of that. As for pasting a website address into an email, depending on where you put it, it could wrap onto a second line and then when the recipient clicks on the shared link, it doesn’t pick up the entire link and they don’t get to benefit from the fantastic page you wanted to share.

When those situations arise, there are a couple of sites that will take the long address (URL) and shorten them. The one I use is called TinyURL. Just paste the website address in the top box,  click on the make tinyurl button, and then copy the resulting short url into Twitter or your email.  SnipURL is another site that does the same thing. Bit.ly is another that is really popular with Twitter and Facebook users. Definitely look at it as well.

Once you start using these programs to shorten your website addresses, you’ll find other reasons to use them besides sharing email links and Twitter.

Filed under: Instructional, Internet Items, PC Tips and Tools |