WordPress launches WP.me URL shortener – Yes, another one
By Dave Parrack
The Internet seems to be ruled by trends. One company will launch a new type of site and others will follow. Or a site will launch a new feature and others will follow. The latest trend sweeping the Web is that of URL shorteners, and the latest site to introduce their own is WordPress. Do we really need all these URL shorteners?
The idea of shortening URLs is not a new one. It was first conceived way back in 2001 as a way of making it easier to share links with others. In 2002, TinyURL was born, and the rest, as they say, is history. Since then, over 100 similar services have popped up, all of which offer the same function but some of which offer extras specifically designed for particular needs.
The last year or so has seen a massive rise in the use of URL shorteners and social networking is to blame. Twitter in particular needs URLs to be shortened or many links could never be shared within the confines of 140-characters. This rise in use has seen new URL shorteners popping up all over the place.
The latest is WP.me, a URL shortener from WordPress.com, the free blog hosting company. Unlike most URL shorteners, WP.me is meant purely for the Web addresses of WordPress.com blogs. Consequently, all WordPress blog and post on those blogs will use a WP.me shortened URL.
WordPress talks up WP.me by claiming it to be the only two-letter .me domain in the world. But that’s about all it has going for it over the (popular and ever-growing) competition. And the only reason it can possibly be useful is for anyone too dumb to shorten their WordPress URL manually using one of the hundreds of other URL shorteners that already exist.
The world (wide Web) really only needs one URL shortener. I personally use TinyURL, many others, including Twitter, use bit.ly. So I fail to see what good WP.me is going to do in an already over-saturated market.
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August 16th, 2009
I think wp.me will only be used for WordPress blog urls. WordPress will be able to garantee this shortener will always work and won’t be droped, which is not the case for other shorteners.
August 18th, 2009
The real news here is support of the rel=shortlink standard on 7 million blogs. If this trend continues we’ll be able to do away with 3rd party URL shortening services altogether as clients will be able to auto-detect the short URLs rather than manufacturing their own.
August 18th, 2009
Hollywood Universal Studios is using to promote a big new movie Despicable.me. This is certainly a BIG boost for the .ME domains. DotME domains are getting ALLOT attention.
I must say DotMe names really are perfect for branding.