Have you ever received an email with a super long link in it, but when you click on it, it sends you to a page not found? Try turning your link into a TinyURL. TinyURL.com is a web service that provides short aliases for redirection of long URLs. Kevin Gilbertson, a web developer, launched the service in January 2002 so that he would be able to link directly to newsgroup postings which frequently have long and cumbersome addresses.

Shorter URLs are better to work with because they are easier to remember, write down, copy and paste, and pass around. They’re great for spaces in which you are limited to the number of characters you are allowed to use such as Twitter and Facebook, and they’re less likely to break when you send them.

TinyURL.com randomly generates a tinyURL (shorter link) after a user pastes the long URL into a text field on the site and hits the make tinyurl button. A user also has the ability to make a custom TinyURL that is more meaningful and easier to repeat, such as http://tinyurl.com/stoneig.