Did you ever wish that the web site address (URL) that you needed to send to a home buyer was not 300 to 500 or more characters long. 

Sure, in HTML mode on your email client, you could embed the URL in a hyperlink in your text, but some buyers are clueless about what a link looks like and they might miss it, right? And many Realtors, much less most buyers, won't even understand what I just said at first reading. It needs simplification.

So maybe its better to just send clients a really short URL.

How about shortening a long MLS address of a home you have for sale. This one is 144 characters long:

http://socallistings.marketlinx.com/SearchDetail/Scripts/PrtBuyFul/PrtBuyFul.asp?emailGUID=ab32821d-9d11-4672-a749-88d32d247034&AgentId=SFERRDEB

Wouldn't it be nicer and safer to just send the client a shorter URL? Say one that is only 25 characters long? How about: http://tinyurl.com/48qh4t. 

See, long URLS are dangerous because clients can make mistakes typing a long URL, or even in copying and pasting one, and an error means that the link would not work. Meaning YOU have to waste time resending the link.

Some Mapquest.com links are interminably long...although the one below is only 109 characters long:

http://www.mapquest.com/maps/240+Calle+Pintoresco+San+Clemente+CA+92672-7504/3000+paradise+road+las+vegas+nv/

But even then, a 25-character one that goes to the same place would be much nicer, huh?

How about: http://tinyurl.com/3rrd2g

Small URLS are also important now on sites like www.Twitter.com which many web-savvy agents use to enhance their positions on the search engines which often read certain kinds of twitter and twitter-related entries. 

You can even have your twitter entries appear on your blog to give you extra key word value if you want. On these Twitter-esque sites you are limited in each post to, say, 150 characters. Well, the value of a tiny URL is obvious here. You can relay far more info if your URL chews up less characters.

Some of you are way ahead of me in already figuring out where to go to get your long urls made tiny. Yes, Virginia, you DO go to http://TinyURL.com which is the same site as www.TinyURL.com.

Just go there, paste in your long, obnoxious 500 character URL, and TinyURL instantly changes it into one that is usually about 25 characters long or less. Then, that URL, when clicked upon, takes you to the same place that the long URL would have taken you.

You can even drag a link, that is on TinyURL.com's home page, to your "Links" section of your browser toolbar and thereafter, whenever you click on your links menu, TinyUrl will be a clickable choice that takes you fast to http://TinyURL.com.

Look at this next cool feature that TinyURL talks about on their site:

Redirection to any page in your site!

With TinyURL, you can also make a smaller URL that will work for any page on your site. Let's say that you have a website with the homepage that is at: http://www.my-internet-isp.com/~myusername

Entering that URL into TinyURL will create a URL like http://tinyurl.com/3

With this, you can then redirect someone to anywhere within your site by appending a slash and the page's file name to it. Therefore, if you have a page at http://www.my-internet-isp.com/~myusername/my-links-page.html, you can use the URL http://tinyurl.com/3/my-links-page.html and going to this URL will forward the visitor to the page in your website.

Maybe you're posting a link as an affiliate of a manufacturer and you do not want your site visitors to know from the URL that you're an affiliate. Then just turn the affiliate link into a TinyURL, hiding it that way, and you're done.

As we get more into Web 2.0 and social networking sites, the value of shorter URLS will become even more important. 

And if you are one of those belligerent ones who insist on keeping their 50-character web site address that every expert told you a million times to get rid of, take hope. 

Yes, I'm talking about that monster home page address that you've stretched in 6 point type across half your business card---so that no one can read it anyway; well, now you can now KEEP that wretched long URL. 

Just use the tiny URL address as a stand-in.