I can’t tell you how often I see an email link that has been sent to me and for one reason or another it wraps making it hard to copy much less click.   I’m sure you’ve seen this.

http://www.thehelpcenters.com/2009/09/17/shortening-
your-links/

Now you’re stuck with kludging together the link to even get things working right. Read More Below...

This is where services like http://bit.ly come into play.   Simply copy your link and instead of the above mess you get a small  link like this http://bit.ly/3epm7B which unless someone is using a screen the size of a dime should be fully visible and clickable in many email programs.

Additionally, if you sign up for an account you can then gain statistics on how many have used your link, what site they came from and even potentially the country.

This is pretty super.  So you can use the shortened links in your emails and Twitter updates.   It doesn’t stop there, as Bit.ly has also allowed for external access to their API so that applications such as TweetDeck can automatically use Bit.ly to shorten the link giving you all the benefits of Bit.ly with no effort on your part.

Now I know there are many other URL shorteners out there and they are as good or better than Bit.ly but right now I’ve consolidated my stuff at Bit.ly.