Video sharing company jumps on the URL shortening trend

Wednesday 23 December 2009 01:00 GMT

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Google's YouTube is the latest internet-based social media company to add URL (Uniform Resource Locator) shortening to their list of achievements for 2009.

On December 21, a week after Google introduced the goo.gl domain and Facebook introduced their fb.me links, YouTube announced that video watchers and content creators will now be able to link to online videos with fewer keystrokes too.

YouTube URLs can now be shared or accessed using the shorter youtu.be URL.

Videos shared using YouTube's AutoShare feature will automatically convert to the shortened URL. Users wanting to try the youtu.be URL can use the following format to make shorter YouTube URLs.

"To use youtu.be manually, simply take a URL like http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FdeioVndUhs and replace the "http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=" with "http://youtu.be/" to get: http://youtu.be/FdeioVndUhs Plug that shorter URL into a browser, and you'll see it redirects to that video," wrote Vijay Karunamurthy, Engineering Manager, YouTube.

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