TinyURL is great for making big-ass emails shorter, no question. I’ve used it regularly for a couple of years now, and it’s reliable and great.
But while it takes care of overly long URLs, it doesn’t do it very gracefully. Those of us who don’t understand the numerous hideous things that can happen upon clicking a blind link don’t do much to assuage the fears of those who do.
Then again, there are geniuses like my new best friend, the adorable, kind and wildly talented Doug Stern, who totally get it. Since Doug is a master self-promoter (i.e., he does it well and for the right reasons) I don’t think he’ll mind if I share his email sig (it’s a screenshot, kids, so don’t make yourself batty trying to click on things):
When I saw that list of clean, orderly URLs at the bottom of his sig, I almost shat myself. While I love my newsletter service provider, I hate being their free ad everywhere I go; even more, I loathe the stupid URL I got. (I think they offer some way of creating permalinks for your newsletter archives on your own site, but if there’s a way to put it on a subpage of one’s own site, I’ve yet to find it.)
Anyway, I immediately did some quick Googling and interwebbery, and found the magic site that will cure all of your wonky permalink woes, Metamark. Not only does it take a big-ass URL and shorten it into a nice, clean redirect–it will add the short, vanity extension of your choice. Behold, my original big-ass, gibberish newsletter signup link from Emma:
https://app.e2ma.net/app/view:Join/signupId:19736
Meh. And bleh.
Now feast your eyes on its brief and elegant cousin:
Note to the extremely nervous: nothing is infallible. Metamark was upfront about their failing, which 86′d a number of URL redirects in early June.
But since my main use for these will be visible URLs–i.e., the kind that grace my email sig rather than the kind that hide, invisible, embedded in HTML on a website (hover over both of the above to see what I mean)–I don’t much care. Email’s shelf life is such that I don’t think a lot of people will be digging through theirs to find that one link I included to my newsletter signup.
And in the short term, it sure is pretty…
xxx
c
{ 7 comments }
This post inspired me to add a signature to my emails, just now. And I totally used a metamark link. xoxo.
Hi Colleen,
Two great ideas here- first is the email signature. I think this article may add something to the discussion as well:
An email signature that really holds water:
http://heartofbusiness.com/articles/mkt5.htm
And, I’m wondering why you need the metamark emails for your own articles? I’m just a little befuddled- where do your articles live on your website? Am I missing something here?
Okay, so here’s my Q. How long do the metamark links live? Because for me, having a link that goes out with an email blast that I have to “re-metamark” every blast is more work. No?
This is what I love about you. Besides all your beauty and talent (because let’s face it, everybody’s got that these days), you’re a fountain of cutting edge information. And you dispense it. When I need to know what’s up, I just come here.
As usual, you are our teacher.
Erik – Yay! The more nerdery, the better!
Mark – Thx for the link.
I didn’t address my need for the Metamark URLs b/c I felt like the post was already borderline overload, but the articles *don’t* live on my site, they live on Casting Network’s. And they created the site using some crazy-ass coding that–I swear to you, I swear I swear–won’t let the permalinks be posted as HTML links! I have no idea what happens b/w pasting the link and posting it, but it removes the salient info that leads one directly to that particular article. Most frustrating, and really, really hard to explain (or believe, for that matter).
Bon – They say two years, plus two years from whatever time they’re last clicked on. They *say*–remember, it’s a free service, and anything can happen/change. So if you want to make sure they reside forever…well, I’d get that smart computer boy of yours to make your own engine so that you can convert to tiny URLs that reside on your own server.
Like I said, better for the *disposable* type of applications. I had to use something for those LAcasting.com articles b/c of the permalink weirdness, but I’ll just put a calendar reminder (or a tickler) to go in twice yearly and click on all the stupid links.
Petrea – I don’t know if it’s cutting edge for the early adopters, but I seem to be useful to some of the rest of my kin in the middle of the majority hump.
Neil – As long as I’m not your *gym* teacher…
Brilliant as usual. Thankee.
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