YouTube launches short URL service

Hot on the heels of parent company Google's announcement in the space, online video platform YouTube has announced a new URL shortening service which could spell bad news for incumbents such as bit.ly and TinyURL.

In a blog posting yesterday, Google engineering manager Vijay Karunamurthy announced youtu.be as a shortener for all YouTube video links "and nothing but YouTube links".

"So you can rest assured that when you see a link with this URL, you are indeed about to click on a YouTube video," he wrote.

"Also, because the link contains the ID of the video you're going to see, developers can do interesting things like show you thumbnails, embed the video directly, or track how a video is spreading in real time."

:story: Full story: V3.co.uk