High Tech Mobile Marketing – Short URL’s

At some point you may have encountered bit.ly or tinyurl.com link, but weren’t sure as to what it was. Bit.ly and tinyurl.com are just a few of many free URL shortening services. URL shorteners will take a URL of any length and turn it into a short redirected link; perfect for overcoming the 140 character limit on twitter! Let’s check it out.

An Example

For example, we can shorten http://builtbyprime.com with the bit.ly service. I will go to bit.ly, enter in builtbyprime.com, and click “Shorten”. The shortened link, http://bit.ly/hNAMMd, pops up, and thats it! If you try clicking the link, you’ll be redirected to our website.

You can now send that link to anyone and it will work for them too. No matter how big a URL you use on bit.ly, it will always end up as http://bit.ly/_____ with six random digits at the end.

Why to use Short URL’s for Mobile Marketing

This service has proved itself very useful, particularly for phones. Entering in a long URL both time consuming and often results in errors. A URL shortener makes entering in URLs much more easier and convenient. Also, many URL shorteners offer simple analytics, so you can see how many people have visited the link.

Words of Caution

There are however a couple downsides to this type of service. If the URL shortener website you used were to suddenly shut down, all of the links it created would instantly stop working. Because the original URL is completely masked by the URL shortener, it can be easily abused to mask spam websites, virus websites, spyware websites, and many other websites that you didn’t want to get to. It is advisable that you only click shortened links given to you by trustworthy websites or people, and use a reliable service.

Also see:

High Tech Mobile Marketing – NFC (Near Field Communication)

High Tech Mobile Marketing – QR Codes