Talking to friends, family, and coworkers online is a daily habit for most of us, but the services we use, such as Twitter and Facebook, have word-limits that cause us problems when writing messages.
For example, Twitter only allows you to put up to 140 characters in your tweets, and Facebook allows a little more, at 420.
These rules are understandable because services like Twitter and Facebook want to keep posts short enough to read at a glance.
They want you to read a lot of tweets and a lot of Facebook statuses, and not let people bog you down with entire articles.
However, this becomes an issue for users when they need to include a link in their tweet or status that shows their readers what they're referring to.
Let's say you want to post a tweet about a story you see on a news website.
Here's a fictitious link that shows just how long these links can be: Fake Link: "http://www.
somenews.
com/id/39574331596/ns/monkey_acts_crazy_at_zoo/" (67 characters) This link is 67 characters long! This dramatically reduces the amount of letters and words you could use to discuss this link with your followers.
This is a very common problem that people run into every single day.
Fortunately, there is a solution, and it's called a link shortener.
Some people call a link a "URL," so you might see a link shortener called a URL shortener, or a URL trimmer.
Basically this type of service shrinks your links so that you can say more in your tweets and status updates.
Here's an example: If you were to enter the above link into a link shortener, it might return a link such as: Fake Short Link: "http://short.
er/1/yWri" (only 22 characters) And that's your new, short link! Just 22 characters make up your link now, as opposed to the original 67 characters.
This frees up plenty of space for you to say more.
When people click on your new short link, they'll be taken to your original link.
For example, Twitter only allows you to put up to 140 characters in your tweets, and Facebook allows a little more, at 420.
These rules are understandable because services like Twitter and Facebook want to keep posts short enough to read at a glance.
They want you to read a lot of tweets and a lot of Facebook statuses, and not let people bog you down with entire articles.
However, this becomes an issue for users when they need to include a link in their tweet or status that shows their readers what they're referring to.
Let's say you want to post a tweet about a story you see on a news website.
Here's a fictitious link that shows just how long these links can be: Fake Link: "http://www.
somenews.
com/id/39574331596/ns/monkey_acts_crazy_at_zoo/" (67 characters) This link is 67 characters long! This dramatically reduces the amount of letters and words you could use to discuss this link with your followers.
This is a very common problem that people run into every single day.
Fortunately, there is a solution, and it's called a link shortener.
Some people call a link a "URL," so you might see a link shortener called a URL shortener, or a URL trimmer.
Basically this type of service shrinks your links so that you can say more in your tweets and status updates.
Here's an example: If you were to enter the above link into a link shortener, it might return a link such as: Fake Short Link: "http://short.
er/1/yWri" (only 22 characters) And that's your new, short link! Just 22 characters make up your link now, as opposed to the original 67 characters.
This frees up plenty of space for you to say more.
When people click on your new short link, they'll be taken to your original link.