You may have noticed more and more that some of your friends on Facbook (http://is.gd/xRz), Twitter (http://bit.ly/CbiIs), and other social networking sites are using very short (and bizarre looking) little links in their posts like, “Jeff Haughton is working on his blog, check it out http://is.gd/83c2“. These are Micro URLs and there are several sites where you can convert a long URL like this: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/search?q=tiny+url&cat=all to this http://tinyurl.com/5j2rz3 or even to this http://is.gd/27yf. Why would you want to do this when you could just copy and paste? Well, that’s what micro blogging is all about isn’t, taking a long thought or idea & compressing it into 140 characters or less? Why would you want to waste precious characters while twittering to your peeps about your favorite author’s new book on Amazon (http://www.amazon.com/Beedle-Collectors-Offered-Exclusively-Amazon/dp/0956010903/ref=pd_bxgy_b_img_b) when you could just do this http://tinyurl.com/6pqfy2 or even this http://is.gd/83jb. So, i think that it is safe to assume that all of these cool little URLs are a direct result of the whole micro blogging phenomena.

Now, I think this new trend is the greatest thing since sliced bread, but that does not mean it doesn’t come without peril. Do you trust your tweeps and facebook pals not to lead you astray? You could easily end up downloading the latest 2009 antiviurs insertion virus or visiting a porn site that would make your weird ass uncle blush.

So click those little URLs with caution, but be sure to share this post with your friends so they can lean how to incorporate micro URLs in their own micro blogging. Here is a micro URL for this site so you can be as hip and savvy as me: http://tinyurl.com/asn69o

Some resources for you to explore on your own:

Mozilla Firefox Micro URL plugins
http://bit.ly/
http://is.gd/
http://tinyurl.com/

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