Wordpress gets own URL shortener

As I have said in recent stories about short URLs, I believe that content management systems (blogging platforms, for example) should have their own short-link generators. Why hand over control of your traffic -- and your analytics -- to a third party, after all?

Automattic's Wordpress.com has launched just exactly this: its own built-in short-link generator. When you're creating a post on the Wordpress.com service, you get an option to create a wp.me link alongside the post's default link.

Wordpress.com users can now get short links from the blog entry page.

(Credit: Screenshot by Rafe Needleman/CNET)

The big advantage to these links, over links from third parties, is that they are pretty much guaranteed to work as long as the Wordpress.com system lives. There's no additional point of failure you introduce by using one of these links. They're also really easy to generate -- you get a short link as you're writing your post.

Short links have been created for every post created using the Wordpress.com platform, which also means that the short links aren't as short as they could otherwise be. When I tried to get new short links for posts on my own blog, the identifying part of the link was eight characters long. New and sparely used shorteners create shorter links: Vb.ly is still creating two-character identifiers.

The Wordpress.com link shortener is "bespoke," Automattic founder Matt Mullenweg told me. "The whole point," he said, "is to couple the permanence of the shortened URL with the canonical one."

Mullenweg also said that Wordpress software users (as opposed to users of the Wordpress.com platform) can get access to the shortener if they use the Stats plugin. Update: That feature isn't available just yet.

[cvaldes1831]

Ugh. The current tech media obsession about URL shorteners is dreadfully lame.

Can't you guys blog about the iPhone, Google Voice, or Erin Andrews? At least you'll get more pageviews.

[ca5ter]

Agreed, but at least its' not Twitter. Jesus, anything Twitter is no longer news.

[cvaldes1831]

Tech media apparently has a hive mentality. One week it's cloud computing, another week it's Twitter, the following week it's App Store rejections, this week it's apparently URL shortening.

Chr*st, can't people write about original topics or is it really "Beating A Horse Into A Bloody Pulp" Week every week?

[faceless128]

vb.ly has 2 character strings? when did they open? yesterday? cuz 2 characters is like under 10,000 links total

i agree about platform sites having their own shorteners though

[mariatseng]

Glad you pointed out the limited potential of 2 characters. Thanks.

[sevenalive]

Why is everyone obsessed with url shortening, what is the big deal if the URL is long, your copying and pasting, your not writing it down anywhere. The only major use for it is to disguise the real url and most people use that for rickrolls or other spam.

[badasscat]

URL shorteners make sense on Twitter, which is why they're en vogue right now. Twitter only gives you 140 characters.

They don't make ANY sense whatsoever, and in fact are entirely counterproductive, on a blog. You're risking SEO, you're risking annoying your users, and you're risking link failure... and for what? Nobody's even going to *see* that shortened url.

CNet has completely lost the plot here if they think this makes sense but other url shortening services don't. They've got it backwards.

[mariatseng]

It's not about the length of the URL -- it's about analytics. When you use a short URL, it tracks visits to your page so you can tell if what you wrote was popular. C'mon folks, study up and read more carefully!

[raakesht]

Try using twitter or apps like that ... you ll get to understand..

[cvaldes1831]

Actually, the way Twitter handles URLs is effing retarded. We shouldn't see URLs at all. There should be a way to convert URLs into hyperlinks. This "convert full URL into shortened URL" is soooo 2002, utterly brain damaged.

Not to say that I'm particularly surprised that Twitter works this way. It's the worst mainstream web service I've ever used and that's saying a lot. The reliability is a complete joke, much of the architecture is completely amateurish, and they don't even know how to effectively market their own service on their own g*ddamned homepage.

[acs001]

I've been using the WP shortlinks for a week already. WordPress should have done this a while away. Now I wonder if the shortlinks will be among the top 5 on Twitter.

[paulej]

But the real question is this: why not just build the URL shortening right into one's own site? Why rely on third parties at all?

[mariatseng]

If you will read the first sentence of Rafe's post, you'll see the word "analytics" toward the end of the first paragraph. Do you know the value of knowing how many people read your posts, a.k.a. market response? As for 'build the URL shortening right into the site," you don't seem to know how URLs are generated and how the Internet uses URLs. Just like your house, it MUST have a REAL ADDRESS or else no one can find it. You can shorten the address AFTER it has been assigned a real address.

[paulej]

@mariatseng, perhaps I was not clear. I did not intend to suggest there is no value in the analytics, but why would a web site want to rely on another web site for tracking such stats?

We have a URL shortner on our site. Should we so choose (but we don't), we could then build graphcs to show clicks based on time of day and location. We could also keep track of how many clicks were from within our own sites or sourced elsewhere, and even record which external sites directed the most traffic to any given link.

As I said, we could easily do all of this. It's not hard. Our objective was not so grand: we just wanted to guarantee that, so long as our site is alive, our shortened links still work. Marketing was not our objective. But, should we want to use it for marketing, I would be even more insistent on keeping that information on our site and entirely under our control.

So, again, I ask: why do people not just employ URL shortners right on their own web servers? I understand the use of third-party services for third-party services (e.g., bit.ly for Twitter), but if one has a popular blog site, why not have a URL-shortner built right into the site? It might be useful for the site owner who generates links, but might also be useful for visitors if they can click on a "Short Link" button and be presented with a little window with a shortned URL to use elsewhere.

[greggvm]

The article references the service working via the Stats plugin for sites running the Wordpress software. Has anyone got this working? I don't see any reference to shortening on the Dashboard.

[DaveinDC]

Me too. I'm confused. I think the link to plugin is in error.

[greggvm]

Yeah, I've searched and can't find any other mention of it. Too bad. Hopefully it will be here soon or someone will extend WP.me in a plugin.

[rafe]

I'll ask Matt. I got that bit of the story from a comment he left on the Automattic blog post (that he wrote) about the short URLs. On my non-CNET blog, ProPRTips.com, I used wordpress.com hosting, so I have not tried the wordpress software plugin myself.

[greggvm]

That would be great Rafe. It would be so nice to see that in a plugin of one kind or another. Thanks!

[rafe]

Just in from Matt: "We haven't made the functionality public yet."

[greggvm]

Well, why the heck not?!! :-)

[madgetwits]

If you post a short url in twitter omitting the leading http:// e.g. bit.ly/cOiO6 instead of http://bit.ly/cOiO6 the url is still clickable in Opera and Firefox, I haven't checked IE or Safari. You can save therefore another 7 characters and that is 5 percent of a full twitter.

[madgetwits]

Bugger! Apologies that should have been www.bit.ly/cOiO6 and you only save 3 characters. Mumble grumble ....

[nelsond9]

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