Why you should use link shorteners

Look at this ugly and unwieldy web link:

https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=280058172174142&set=a.273149396198353.1073741847.144312465748714&type=3&src=https%3A%2F%2Ffbcdn-sphotos-g-a.akamaihd.net%2Fhphotos-ak-xpf1%2Ft1.0-9%2F10371729_280058172174142_1592109468619161070_n.jpg&size=960%2C623

Here is the same link, shortened:

http://on.fb.me/1nAQleM

Isn't that neat? Also, so convenient when you want to share it on Twitter (with its 140-character limit) and on other social networks.

You can even customise that shortened link to, say, http://bit.ly/RDPfb.

I use https://bitly.com/ to shorten links. But there are other URL crunchers available on the web, such as http://goo.gl/ and http://tinyurl.com/.

• There's one more thing you should know about using links. When you post a link as part of your status update on, say, Facebook, once the relevant site is "live", you should delete the link BEFORE sharing the status update. That way only what you want us to read will be seen in the status update. Try it now.