Minilinks to Web sites multiplying

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: If you have spent any time on the Internet in the last few months, chances are you have clicked on a shortened link Web address.

URL shorteners , which abbreviate unwieldy Web addresses into bite-size links, have been around for years. TinyURL.com, the most popular, was started in 2002 by a unicyclist named Kevin Gilbertson. But the tools have now soared in popularity, in part because of microblogging sites like Twitter and Facebook, where messages are limited in length and every character counts.

URL shorteners are easy to build, and dozens of competitors have proliferated, with minimalist, character-conserving names like Bit.ly, Is.gd and Tr.im. Most of them are simple tools created as a labour of love with no real business model behind them. Shorteners, however, could have real value beyond making Web addresses more manageable, said Danny Sullivan, editor of the blog Search Engine Land.

They have the ability to keep track of use—how many times a particular link was clicked and the geographic location of the clickers—which could be valuable to marketers, news outlets and companies looking to measure the impact of a link, tweet or mention online. “The tracking element is important,” said Sullivan. Some tools even highlight comments posted to Facebook or FriendFeed about a particular link—features that standard tools like Google Analytics may not be able to provide.

A popular link-shortening service, Bit.ly, is trying to build a business around that kind of data. Betaworks Studios is a New York technology incubator that has invested in Tumblr, a microblogging tool; OMGPOP, a social gaming site; and Outside.in, a hyperlocal news aggregator. It developed Bit.ly as an internal tool for its portfolio of companies to use. “It emerged as much more than that,” said John Borthwick, CEO of Betaworks. “Everyone from Dell to Demi Moore is on Twitter and may want to track their emerging social system.”

Since Bit.ly was introduced last year, its volume has soared. The company says that now 50 million Bit.ly links are clicked each week—more than double the rate of early April. “And next week, we’re expecting to hit 60 million,” said Andrew Weissman, the COO of Betaworks.