Krishna De: Insights From Ireland On Digital Marketing, Social Media And Entrepreneurship

I've written a number of times about link shortening tools on my main blog and over at Facebook.

This weekend I had a problem with one of the shortening tools that I use who were moving servers and none of my short urls worked - in fact I could not access the system at all.

It is was another great reminder that it's not wise to leave important services that you need and rely on to a free third part resource - but we all seem to use short URL services don't we?

Short URL's are increasingly popular (Facebook and Google recently launching their own) as we share links in twitter and in status updates on Facebook, LinkedIn and Skype just to name a few places that I see short URL's referenced.

Just before Christmas, YouTube launched their own short URL service - youtu.be - only for YouTube links. I think this will be used increasingly as it will mean that people recognise the link and will have more confidence in it as it will mean that clicking on the link you will be being directed to YouTube.

To see this feature in action, use AutoShare to link up your YouTube account to social networks. Autoshare enables you to share your activity on YouTube with your community on Facebook, Twitter or Google Reader. Then, whenever you favorite a video on YouTube, for example, that action will get syndicated out to your network, who will see the shortened edition of the video's URL.

I personally don't use Autoshare, but if you are like me there is still a way to benefit from the YouTube short URL.

Use youtu.be manually -

• just take a URL like http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z7WpEZgr7H8

• and replace the"http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=" with "http://youtu.be/"

• to get: http://youtu.be/Z7WpEZgr7H8 - that should take you to my video about how to use Twitter hash tags (see the video below).

This means that you can identify to your followers and fans that it's a YouTube link you are sharing with them.

What's your favourite short URL service? Can you impagine using Youtu.be?

Oh and in case you are interested here are some of the other innovations that took place on YouTube in 2009.

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History is captured on YouTube all the time but a little piece of social history that I think is quite amazing is the archive footage of Anne Frank seen leaning over her balcony in 1941 watching the wedding of her next door neighbour (see 9 seconds through the video).

Anne Frank is filmed seen leaning over her balcony in 1941 and is the only existing film images of Anne Frank have been loaded on to YouTube by Amsterdam museum the Anne Frank House. The footage, from 1941, is the only time Anne has been captured on film.

The scene was filmed on 22 July 1941, just under a year before the Frank family went into hiding above the family business. The family were discovered in August 1944 and Anne died in a Nazi concentration camp in March 1945.

Annemarie Bekker, from the Anne Frank House, is reported in the Guardian as saying YouTube is a way to introduce the life of Anne Frank to people who may never have heard of her diaries and commented "The museum has had the footage for some time, but thought YouTube would be a good platform to show the film and the other films about her life. It's another way to bring the life of Anne Frank to the attention of younger people, and all people worldwide."

A brilliant example of how new technology intersects with history.

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