In the ubiquitous world of broswers, smartphones and tablets, we increasingly access and share content with social media using a variety of software clients (apps). For me, I use Reeder on Mac and iOS, FlipBoard, Zite, TweetBot on iOS, Osfoora for Mac and when on the Win7 desktop at work, I have TweetDeck for keeping a track of stuff.
I've noticed a number of popular bloggers have their own customised URL shorteners and it seemed right for me to get into it. Of course, you need to do your homework in relation to
- Buying a short URL domain - I used Domainr for searching and seeing what's available
- Check for custom shortener support within the apps you use (I use Bit.ly and CloudApp Pro)
Getting the short URL may cost you. You may need to get creative. Added to that is the extension is country specific and as you will realise, country domain registrars require supporting paper work to complete such domain purchase requests. I initially looked at a .mo URL and found it has documentation evidence requirements to support the registration out of the country of Macao.
Apps such as FlipBoard or Zite, aggregate content and understandably want everyone to know that. Hence, you can't customise URL for sharing articles out on your Facebook or Twitter timeline. Your typical RSS feeds or stuff you create gives you a free reign.
All you do is configure your URL shortener service to point to your domain, wait for the transfer to complete and then you're all set. Go into your client (in this case, Tweetbot, TweetDeck or Reader - on each device) and it's all good. Your URL brand is now alive.
Be aware there's a wide variety of URL shortening providers and the apps vary in what they will support — hence the rather unexpected subscription I needed to make for CloudApp Pro to support my custom URL in Osfoora for Mac. The problem of course is choice.
