What's the real benefit of shortened urls?

[godinu]

Tinyurl and the like are immensely popular, and sure they're nice for just not having to type one's entire domain name in. But these days it's easy to just hotlink whatever words to your site whenever you post the link in a forum, for instance, so what's really the point? Most people are just clicking whatever you type and not typing in by hand anyway.

 

[owntype]

Sometimes for privacy. E.g. Google may punish the site that selling links.

 

[Timewarp]

Its good for email which tend to break long links.

Its also an easy way to cloak links eg. if you dont want google seeing a ton of affiliate links on your site they can be hidden.

 

[godinu]

hey thanks, both of you. makes sense.

 

[kellie]

Also super helpful for things like Twitter where you're limited in the length of your posts.

 

[Fka200]

Also super helpful for things like Twitter where you're limited in the length of your posts.

Yep