Whatever people think about short url’s we think they are here to stay, not only are they handy for fitting into your tweets they are also an invaluable way to track users behavior throughout social media. Each short url can be tracked as it is passed about by users. Data can be built up on when and who clicked through and where they all came from, this in turn lets marketeers track the success or failure of their campaigns.

Shortening 101

We have been working for several months behind the scenes with a whole range of the short url services so that we could bring publishers a unique range of services built upon the most popular of these services. So far TweetMeme has either taken whatever short url it first spotted, and or we re-shortened via a shortlist of highly reliable + scalable services (e.g. bit.ly). You have all been vocalising your desire to customize this and we have been listening.

Included in the next release (happening this week) is the ability to choose which short url you want. For automated shortening we support 7 of the most popular shortening services and will be adding more over the coming weeks. On top of that we already support personalized shortening (where you supply an API key so that the tracking data is then individual to yourself) for 3 of those services. And again we will continue to work with our partners to add further support.

And best of all, all of them work with our ‘One-Click’ retweet that lets users retweet without leaving the site the button is on.

As we announced last Friday we are also releasing the ability to place retweet buttons in RSS & Emails

If you run a shortening service or have one that your would like to see supported please get in touch or via @tweetmemedev.

We have been rather busy with all the updates to tweetmeme and so had not got round to looking at the daily statistics we collect on which URL shorteners get used the most on twitter. I peeked at the data tonight and was surprised at what I found. Firstly BIT.LY has gained nearly 3% market share in the space of 3 weeks (last time we reported was 23rd March). Also IS.GD gained 1% and now taken up 3rd place, overall this means TINYURL.COM has lost over 3%.

TINYURL is really only holding this because twitter uses it as it’s core shortening service – but does not have the features of some of its rivals, how long twitter keeps it this way is matter up for much debate.