Branded short URLs in the wild and on TweetDeck

Just noticed something cool and wanted to share. If you’re using bit.ly to shorten URLs and add a Techcrunch (techcrunch.com) or Onion (theonion.com) URL to the compose window in TweetDeck, instead of shortening to a bit.ly link you’ll get an appropriately branded short URL i.e. tcrn.ch or onion.com.

I’ve subsequently learnt (from the bit.ly guys) this is part of a new bit.ly PRO service and these branded URLs will soon be opened up to all bit.ly PRO enterprise users. From a user point of view short URLs with a greater sense of transparency can’t be bad and as a publisher getting potentially thousands of additional brand mentions in the stream wouldn’t hurt either.

So if you notice URLs shortening to something other than bit.ly in your TweetDeck, don’t panic - this is expected and potentially rather interesting. Might be worth registering that short URL for your brand sooner rather than later. Could someone build a short URL generator?

UPDATE: use http://domai.nr for a short domain generator (thanks yahelc)