+Frank B. Subscriber² Posted December 22, 2009 Subscriber² Share Posted December 22, 2009 Make Way for youtu.be Links It's all the rage: link shorteners to ensure that those useful URLs you're sharing don't take up too much precious character count while also giving you an inkling of what you're about to click on. Well, we've just launched youtu.be as a shortener for YouTube video links -- and nothing but YouTube links -- so you can rest assured that when you see a link with this URL, you are indeed about to click on a YouTube video. (Also, because the link contains the ID of the video you're going to see, developers can do interesting things like show you thumbnails, embed the video directly, or track how a video is spreading in real-time.) To see this feature in action, use AutoShare to link up your YouTube account to social networks like Twitter and Google Reader. Then, whenever you favorite a video on YouTube, for example, that action will get syndicated out to your network, who will see this shortened edition of the video's URL. To use youtu.be manually, simply take a URL like and replace the"http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=" with "http://youtu.be/" to get: http://youtu.be/FdeioVndUhs. Plug that shorter URL into a browser, and you'll see it redirects to that video. News source: The Official YouTube Blog Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Syanide Posted December 22, 2009 Share Posted December 22, 2009 What's the point? My Twitter client already shortens long links. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Digitalx Posted December 22, 2009 Share Posted December 22, 2009 well that's handy Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
still1 Posted December 22, 2009 Share Posted December 22, 2009 whats the point???? it just removes com and watch?v from the url Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+John. Subscriber¹ Posted December 22, 2009 Subscriber¹ Share Posted December 22, 2009 I don't see the point in this unless they're customized. As people have said, most twitter clients automatically shorten these days, and you're essentially removing 10 characters from a link, which isn't a lot. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
lnmnky Posted December 22, 2009 Share Posted December 22, 2009 Why doesn't twitter remove the http:// part as they convert it to a link anyway. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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