URL Shortening Twitters To Success
Not being a great ‘ideas’ man myself it’s never actually happened to me - but it must be really annoying when you develop something that you think is the bees-knees, you’re positive that it’s a real winner but then it doesn’t really ‘catch the wave’! How disappointing must that be? And then, maybe when you’ve just about given up hope, something else becomes hugely popular and almost by accident, your ‘killer application’ is a perfect-fit, it comes of age and takes off big-time.
IMHO such is the current role of the URL shortening companies: if you’ve never heard of URL shortening/condensing, then you’ll need to be aware that these companies developed an application that took really long ugly URLs and hugely reduced them in length-size. They’ve been around for a while (TinyURL for example has been around since 2002) but there was never that much of a compelling interest in their services but then … along comes the current social media behemoth Twitter with its twit-posting service that’s predicated on limiting the number of characters in every post to 140 characters.
So there you have it – a massively popular posting service where character saving isn’t just a ‘nice-to-have’ but it’s an absolute must that’s suddenly found it’s place in the market. Twitter have aligned themselves with TinyURL as their default solution but there’s loads of others out there and who knows which is the best to use, when so many are offered and new ones seem to appear each day? Well look no further! That much read Internet icon Danny Sullivan has posted a detailed analysis after reviewing various services and how they stacked up in a variety of features and you can read it all here (for reference I’ve shown the long and short URLs).
http://searchengineland.com/analysis-which-url-shortening-service-should-you-use-17204 (86 chars)
http://bit.ly/ZuUw (18 chars)
In terms of what’s the best URL shortening service to follow, I’ll add no further commentary to what Danny’s written apart from to give personal added focus to the passage he writes on Stability. If you want the ‘little URL’ in your Tweet-post to live on, there’s little point in aligning yourself to a ’shoestring’ company that’s not going to give adequate support because as Danny says, “Nothing is more annoying than tweeting a link using a URL shortener and then having people tweet back at you that the link isn’t working, because the URL shortening service has gone down.” … or if the service just suddenly shuts down for whatever reason and all your links are ‘toast’!
Ultimately, you’ll make your own individual choices and Danny’s review is fantastically helpful in that regard. There’s little doubt that TinyURL has got the wind in its sails at the moment, although personally I’m a devotee of the newer service Bit.ly.
So URL shortening has at last Twittered to its place in the sun – well done to the innovators for holding on: rewarded at last!
Votive Leadership Case Study
The Challenge :
Votive Leadership are a well established leadership development training company who were looking to update their flash website to a more modern search engine friendly look and feel to reflect the changes within their company.
Background :
Votive are a Leadership Development company specialising in the development and creation of Leadership behaviours at all levels within the corporate organisation. Beginning with Leading Self they are there throughout the leaders lifecycle, be it designing a solution for those who are Leading Others, Leading Leaders or Leading Organisations. They pride themselves on creating bespoke solutions for each of their client partners and designing programmes which create lasting change.
Sensitive Education Consultancy Case Study
The Challenge :
The Sensitive Education Consultancy approached us looking for a complete re-brand including logo and stationary design plus producing their first web site to showcase their services. The company were looking for a fresh and modern brand to reflect their approach towards education consultancy.
Background :
Jan Martin (SENSItive Education Consultancy Ltd.) specialises in working with primary and secondary schools, PRUs, Local Authorities, and independent school groups on a range of school improvement activities; self-evaluation, primary and secondary curriculum development, strategies for improving learning and teaching, building effective leadership and management at all levels, and providing strategic and operational advice on developing Inclusion & SEN provision.
Champions Again
The easiserv.com sponsored 7 aside football team won their Monday night league last night with victory in their last 2 games ensuring they finished 9 points clear with a goal difference of +78!
The team is made up of employees, contractors, family and friends and have done really well again this year to claim another title for the easiserv.com trophy cabinet against some stiff (and not so stiff) competition.
The lads can enjoy a long break before the new season starts (next week!) and there is talk of a new kit to replace the 3 year old kit currently worn by the players that can still fit in it!
Well done lads and we look forward to the end of season celebrations!