Social Networking 101: How do I shorten long urls ?

July 9, 1:53 PMDC Technology ExaminerTanya Gupta

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Looong urls don't work well in social networks such Twitter or Facebook.  Short is lovely and that is where bit.ly comes in.  Twitter automatically shortens all urls that paste so that only the short bit.ly url shows up.  With other Social Networks, short urls need to be created and bit.ly is great for doing that.

Here is what you do:

1) Copy the url of the article or website you want to post.  For instance here is my article on Google's Chrome Operation System:

http://www.examiner.com/x-10080-DC-EGovernment-Examiner~y2009m7d8-The-real-deal-Beyond-Googles-Chrome-OS

2) Now that you have copied the long url, go to bit.ly here:

http://bit.ly/

3) Paste the really long url into the box right under the words "Enter the web address (URL) here"

4) Click on the button "Shorten"

5) Voila!  You have an itty bitty url that you can now post to Social Networking sites

6) Last note - you can also create an account on bit.ly.  If you do so, you can post directly to Twitter.  To do so click on "sign up" (see above screen shot).  This will take you to the sign up page (see below).  Put in your user name, email address, password, and click on "sign up".  You are all set to post directly to Twitter