YouTube jumps on Twitter bandwagon with URL trimmer

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From YouTube.com to Youtu.be

YouTube shortening - we demand Utyb
YouTube shortening - we demand Utyb

YouTube has decided its URL is just, well, too long, and is now offering its users the chance to trim them down.

The move clearly comes as the world starts to cut down its URLs to use in the likes of Twitter.

Speaking on the Official YouTube Blog, the video-hosting site said that it hopes cool things will be possible with the new service.

YouTube only

"We've just launched youtu.be as a shortener for 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.

"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."

If you're interested in chopping letters out of web addresses from YouTube, then just use AutoShare from your YouTube account synced with something like Twitter, and the URL will be snipped.

If you want to do it manually (well, machines get to do too many fun jobs already) then simply switch the 'http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=' element of the URL with http://youtu.be/ and you'll be good to go.

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Gareth Beavis
Gareth Beavis
Formerly Global Editor in Chief

Gareth has been part of the consumer technology world in a career spanning three decades. He started life as a staff writer on the fledgling TechRadar, and has grown with the site (primarily as phones, tablets and wearables editor) until becoming Global Editor in Chief in 2018. Gareth has written over 4,000 articles for TechRadar, has contributed expert insight to a number of other publications, chaired panels on zeitgeist technologies, presented at the Gadget Show Live as well as representing the brand on TV and radio for multiple channels including Sky, BBC, ITV and Al-Jazeera. Passionate about fitness, he can bore anyone rigid about stress management, sleep tracking, heart rate variance as well as bemoaning something about the latest iPhone, Galaxy or OLED TV.