If you’ve been following the Twitter craze this might be of interest to you… if you’re not sure what Twitter is the check out my post Twitter – what it is and what’s the point? for a brief overview before you start.

With the surge of hype surrounding Twitter lately, there will no doubt be some plugins/hacks/etc to leverage it. TwitThis is just that. TwitThis is an easy way for people to send Twitter messages about your blog post or website. When visitors to your website click on the TwitThis button or link, it takes the URL of the webpage and creates a shorter URL using TinyURL. Then visitors can send this shortened URL and a description of the web page to all of their friends on Twitter.

So basically you can provide a “Twitter friendly” link about your blog post. This link is smaller and formatted in a way that’s easier to use on Twitter. For example:

Turn this URL:

http://www.mapquest.com/maps/map.adp?ovi=1&mqma
p.x=300&mqmap.y=75&mapdata=%252bKZmeiIh6N%252bI
gpXRP3bylMaN0O4z8OOUkZWYe7NRH6ldDN96YFTIUmSH3Q6
OzE5XVqcuc5zb%252fY5wy1MZwTnT2pu%252bNMjOjsHjvN
lygTRMzqazPStrN%252f1YzA0oWEWLwkHdhVHeG9sG6cMrf
XNJKHY6fML4o6Nb0SeQm75ET9jAjKelrmqBCNta%252bsKC
9n8jslz%252fo188N4g3BvAJYuzx8J8r%252f1fPFWkPYg%
252bT9Su5KoQ9YpNSj%252bmo0h0aEK%252bofj3f6vCP

gets converted into this tinyURL:

http://tinyurl.com/6

It will also enable people to use those smaller URL’s over their mobile phones (as that seems to be the all the hype around Twitter use). Again, Twitter is probably geared more towards the younger crowd who want to provide up to the minute “here’s what the hell I’m doing NOW” kind of blogging. But that younger crowd is also heavy into SMS text messaging, mobile phone Internet, etc. The idea of TinyURL isn’t anything new, but this is a creative use of it that will allow users to blur the line between their existing blog and their Twitter accounts. If you’re a WordPress user, they even have a plugin so you can plop this right into your existing site.

Link: TwitThis