Shortening (and tracking) via bit.ly

So you want to pass on a useful link. What's the best way to do it? Well if you want to pass it on via Twitter or other microblogging site you need to keep things short and most URLs ain't short.

Well there are a number of shortening sites available. The one I use is called bit.ly and this is available automatically when you put a URL into Twitter. However, I find it more useful to have an account on bit.ly itself and use that to shorten my links before passing them on in an email or microblogging them.

Why do that though? Isn't it easier to just use Twitter to shorten then automatically?

It might be easier (very slightly) in the short term, but doing it my way means that you have a record

a list of all the links you pass on, and you can reuse them,

plus clicking the "info" button gives continuing access statistics - over time periods:

and countries where accessed from:

You can also achieve some of this by copying the bit.ly shortened URL into your address filed in your browser and putting a "+" character on the end to see the stats. Okay on an ad hoc basis, but not as good for continued stats.