TinyURL, Bit.ly and Genealogy

I have had a busy day today so I am going to share what has been a very useful technique for me while doing genealogical research.

In the past 18-20 years I have shared a lot of data with Family, friend and strangers on the internet. I had an e-mail address and was active in a Salt Lake City based Computer Club way back in the early 1990’s. Back in those days you had two providers – Prodigy and CompuServe. My prodigy address was ANDH68A@prodigy.com. You were assigned an address back then; you did not choose one.

Also, I must say that what I am about to share was not available back in the 1990”s.

It’s not unusual today to get web addresses that are over 60+ characters in length. The two most notable sites, which come to mind, are Ancestry and Family Search. Often we share genealogical information from these sites with family and friends.

It has been my experience that problems can occur in exchanging/transmitting web addresses and we wind up with an address or link that sometime does not work.

To reduce or eliminate these errors we need to shorten this address. I highly recommend these two websites.

https://bitly.com/

http://tinyurl.com

For example, I will use the death certificate from one of my relatives. The death certificate can be found on Ancestry at this address (URL):[1] I want to share this certificate with a cousin in Mississippi. For me the choice is simple – I prefer the shorten Web address.

http://search.ancestry.com/iexec?htx=View&r=an&dbid=8741&iid=VRDUSASC1821_088563-00664&fn=Charles+E&ln=Brock&st=r&ssrc=&pid=22949

Using TinyUrl we get this URL for a replacement

http://tinyurl.com/72kkv5f

That’s 129 characters that have been reduced to above URL which has a length of 26 characters:

When we use Bit.ly we get

http://ancstry.me/yTQp3h

Those same 129 characters have been reduced to above URL which has a length of 24 characters:

Oftentimes, when I find data on-line I have use one of these two services to shorten a lengthy URL and pasted that shorten URL into my RootsMagic genealogical research database.

I use shorten URL to post and respond on Genforum, RootsWeb Message Boards , Facebook, Ancestry Message Notification and in e-mail correspondence. It’s a very useful tool in my genealogical research.

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[1] - uniform resource locator (URL)