A super-simple, super-effective way of adding value to status updates, comments on blogs and online conversations is adding links. But, heck, who wants to see a super-long URL such as this: http://www.flickr.com/photos/marykatemurray/2082264598/ And, well, when you only have but 140 or so characters to post your update or tweet, every precious letter or number counts. Isn’t this prettier? http://bit.ly/8EYoe3
To learn a bit more about URL shorteners, here’s a how-to/introductory video that addresses several tools.
Personally, I like http://is.gd. 
