There are a number of free services that will take a long web adress and shorten it. A few examples of these companies are notlong.com, bit.ly,
and LinkBee.
What these services do is take a long URL and give you an alternitve URL that is much shorter. The URL for this article is http://myadvertisingmarket.com/wordpress/2009/06/02/beware-of-url-shorteners/. When run through Bit.ly, they offer http://bit.ly/tYoqr. Sometimes a shorter URL is helpful or even required. Some programs, such as, email and Twitter have length restrictions.
Much caution should be exercised before utilizing one of these services. The originator of the URL loses control over their content. A websites privacy policy could be violated by sending your viewer to an unknown third-party. What information are they gathering on your customer? Are they placing advertisements onto what your customer sees? What happens to the URL if the service goes out of business?
In general, if you want a shorter URL, you should create it yourself and keep control.
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