Twitter Shortener (t.co) – Consistency of Codes for Same Links

• Shorter URLs are easier to work with, you can spell them over the phone, etc.
• Most URL shortening services allow you to monitor their use.
• Short URLs don't break in the e-mail. Some e-mail clients break long lines of text and this can cause the URL to be unclickable or it can lead to a wrong address (half of the URL is cut off).
• If your character count is limited (e.g. Twitter), short URLs come in handy.
• Also, URL shorteners can prevent linkrot. You can create a shortened URL. Then if the original URL changes, you can update the shortened URL with new URL. People that click on the short URL will always be redirected to a correct URL.

If you happen to use GMail, you can fool the system. On GMail's end, they ignore "." and anything after a "+" in the username.

All of the following are equivalent in GMail's eyes and would end up in the same inbox:

• rchern
• r.chern
• r.c.h.e.r.n
• rchern+twit1
• rchern+twit2