Have you been on Twitter and wandered what all those short links are and where they came from?  Have you tried to post a link yourself but found that it has consumed almost all of your 140 characters?

What are short links?

Short links can be created on a variety of services, they not only help fit long url’s into tweets but can also be tracked.  This means that you can see how many people have clicked the link you have posted.  It is particularly useful because a large number of Twitter users are using third party software to access their accounts which means that it can prove impossible to measure how many click thru’s you are getting from your tweets.

So how do you create short links yourself?

There are many link shortening sites out there but my two favorites are: short.ie and bit.ly.  Both allow you to create an account so that you can view the stats on your links.

Creating a link is simple.  Copy the link from the address bar of page you want to post.  Paste it into the space provided on short.ie or bit.ly.  Click the ‘shorten’ button and it will provide you with a tweet sized link.

For example, the link for this blog post would normally be:

http://spiderworking.com/blog/2009/11/27/how-to-make-short-links-for-twitter

Using short.ie it becomes:  http://short.ie/tzi7ga

Using bit.ly it becomes:  http://bit.ly/72NfW4