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

Quick thoughts and tips about building visibility, buzz, reputation and profits - plus stuff that doesn't fit my blog

YouTube launches it's own short URL

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 -

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

 

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.