Yet another URL shortener, this time from WordPress

Stephen Withers
Monday, 17 August 2009 06:00

Your IT - Home IT

Blog host WordPress.com has launched its own URL shortener.

The announcement that tr.im was shutting down caused quite a flurry in the URL shortening world. Even though that plan was later rescinded, the resulting activity has included the creation of wp.com, a new shortening service by blog host WordPress.com.

Apart from a cute name, what's special about wp.me?

It is being operated by WordPress to provide short links to WordPress-hosted items, so users can be reasonably confident that wp.com links will continue to work as long as wordpress.com is operating.

WordPress says it is monitoring the use of wp.com links to remove spam. That's probably a good move, as searching twitter.com com for tr.im links yields a high proportion of spammy looking results.

wp.me is also simple to use, as it has been integrated with wordpress.com. When editing a post, all you need to do is click the Get Shortlink button to obtain a wp.me link to the post.

An equivalent function will be available to self-hosted sites running the WordPress software via the stats plugin.