I first came across TinyURL on Facebook—suddenly, it seemed like everyone I knew was posting these very short links. I didn’t quite know what to make of it; while I was often able to determine the nature of the target of a long link (this was before FB had quite integrated thumbnails, text from the target page, etc.), these new, shorter links took up so little space, and were much more aesthetically pleasing. Once I jumped on Twitter, I discovered the true purpose of link shortening: supply and demand. With only 140 characters to use, each became far more valuable (the link to this post would burn up 59 of those characters—that’s 42%!).
After TinyURL came several others in the same vein, including bit.ly (which saves you 5 characters over TinyURL, or about 3.6% on Twitter) and HootSuite’s integrated versions, ow.ly and ht.ly, all of which allow you to track metrics on your shortened links if you log in.
As far as usefulness in the library, the major function of link shortening is for use with our Facebook or Twitter accounts; we can create shorter, more memorable links to post to our social media outlets, as well as to tell to patrons who may be interested.
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