Here’s a little bit of Monday Morning sexy for you!
OK, it’s not drop dead sexy, but this is pretty doggone exciting for us Facebook Nerds!!!
Do you have a Facebook Fan Page? If so, you might really enjoy this announcement:
Facebook has joined the ranks of services that offer link shortening!!
Here’s how it works:
I have a Facebook Fan Page with a “vanity URL.” You can get one for yourself once 25 people “like” your site.
Mine’s http://www.facebook.com/SocialMediaDesign/
Here’s the new, fun sexy:
From now on when you want to direct people to your profile or Page you can shorten your Page links to something like this: http://fb.com/SocialMediaDesign. OR this: http://fb.me/socialmediadesign/ Very nice!!
You can also use it for your profile:
http://fb.com/lorirandallstradtman/ OR http://fb.me/lorirandallstradtman/
I’m so excited!!
How about you share your new, shortened Facebook Page links with us here? 😉 All are welcome!
Will you use this shorter link from now on?
BTW min is http://fb.me/ErnoHanninkEN
I think I will, Erno! The “fb.me” version is SO Apple, isn’t it? I’ve been on their MobileMe service from the beginning and this almost feels like a copyright infringement. What do you think?
And, oh yes, I’ll shorten the links unless some good tracking reason precludes it in the future. You?
I can’t see any Copyright infringement here Lori, the .me top level domain is for Montenegro.
(from wikipedia)
The .me domain names must be at least 3 characters and at most 63 characters in length, excluding the extension.[1] Exceptions to this rule were granted to WordPress, for its URL shortener WP.me, to Facebook, for their short URL fb.me, to GoDaddy for their short URL go.me, and to Yahoo!, for their short URL me.me
So, Apple has nothing to do about this 🙂
You’re so right, Eric! Good call, going to an actual resource instead of idly speculating… like I was… 🙂 Thanks so much for visiting and contributing to our discussion! Hope you’re managing to stay warm… crazy weather!!
Pretty cool…do you know if they have auto-shortening, so you can paste a long url and they’ll automatically shorten it for you? If not I’m sure it won’t be long before they have that. Nice little add-on. Oh, mine’s http://www.fb.com/wattmediainc
but I just realized, is it really link shortening? It’s more like domain forwarding since fb.com forwards to facebook.com. and they’re not shortening anything else but the domain. i’m sure it’s not far behind though.
Good Point Amir! I guess it’s technically functioning as a redirect, but it looks and feels like a shortener. And no, I don’t think it’s automatic just yet.
Love your business concept, btw! No elevator music with fakey voices?! Now that’s a good idea!! 😀
thanks! I appreciate it.
I have a fakey voice message via RingCentral that I grapple with… LOL!
Very cool! We will definitely be using this for our CVB fan page. Thanks for the post! 🙂 http://fb.com/VisitAlbuquerque
Kelly
Hi Kelly! Thanks for stopping by! And thanks for sharing your link. It’s so beautiful in Albuquerque!!
Gotcha covered Claire!! 😀 Just created a video tutorial for you this afternoon and will upload it to Facebook and post it here this evening. I actually had to ask a friend because the interface is always changing. It’s not obvious at all anymore!
Is there a way to track click through on these shortened links? Facebook let me connect my fan page to our twitter account and it sends all links posted on our facebook page directly to our twitter stream with the fb shortened URLs. I would like to see how many people are clicking on those twitter links but can’t figure out where to find this info.
Hi Kate!
You ask a very good question. At this point I haven’t heard anything about Facebook offering tracking options with their shortened links. Think it’s just for the schmexy factor and convenience. However, if you want to track these links (brilliant idea!) I suggest taking a look at either HootSuite (for their Ow.ly shortener/analytics) or the ever faithful Bit.ly service. Both offer fine tracking and analytics. Hope this helps! And thanks for stopping by!
Omigosh Claire!! I just saw your question with this post… *doh!* Glad you got it all figured out! 🙂