Metzger Business

August 10, 2009

URL Shorteners: Does it matter which one I use?

Filed under: Small Business,Social Media — Tags: , , , , — MetzgerBusiness @ 11:13 am

There are many url shortening services available on the web. These services allow you as the consumer of the service to view statistics on click throughs. The service also provides an easy way to publish short urls when typing in Twitter or email so that the link will never get broken.

The problem with a url shorting services is what happens when they shut down. Any url’s that you have hosted with the service will no longer work and you will have to either fix the links or have many dead links to you web site. This weekend the URL shorting service tr.im declared that they would be closing. The URLs will be good through December at which time they will no longer work. So what should these users do? Who should they go with? And if you are a new to URL shortening then which service should you choose.

I personally like the bit.ly service. According to Tr.im in their press release this weekend the bit.ly service is said to be “anointed” by twitter as “the market winner.” It certainly has a large number of Twitter users, is easy to use, has been extended to work in word press blogs in conjunctions with Twitter Tools, and provides excellent data on click throughs. Additionally it will be around for quite a while.

Another good and seemingly permanent fixture is TinyURL.com. I have used tinyurl in the past but they do not provide the same statistical data bit.ly does. I like to know how many people click on my links. The other advantage of bit.ly is that when you log in you can see all previously shortened URL’s.

There are other URL shorteners out there but sticking with these two for now should ensure that you will not end up with dead links on your site.

July 28, 2009

Blog Talk Radio – Customer service situation #3

Filed under: Musings — Tags: , , , , , , — MetzgerBusiness @ 7:04 am

I do a weekly radio program on Blog Talk Radio. Blog Talk Radio is a service that provides a call in number and then does streaming audio over the Internet. They post to iTunes, tweet and update facebook for me. Overall I love the service and it’s free.

They also offer two levels of enhanced service. I signed up for the lower level enhanced service so I would be able to call my guests directly from the control panel. Unfortunately the service just didn’t work well. I emailed with and live chatted with customer service but they were just awful. There was no phone number to call and the service rep didn’t know what to do so she told to try contacting someone else but didn’t give me any information about who to contact. Then the function suddenly started working but the next time I logged in it did not work again.

So I hadn’t canceled the service yet as I really wanted the ability to conference people into the show but then I was billed and realized that since we hadn’t been able to get the functionality working it was time to cancel the premium service. Canceling the service was confusing. First I had to find where I could cancel the service. Then I hit the cancel button but did not receive any confirmation that the service was canceled, so I had to look around the site and I found something telling me that I had to notify BTL in writing that I was canceling. So I sent an email and asked for a refund. BTL responded to the email confirming that they canceled my service but had to refer me to another group for a refund. As of today 5 days after canceling I have not heard anything back from BTL.

Hmmm. They certainly are no Apple or even and Amazon. Good luck to BTL they’ll need it if they keep this type of customer service. I’ll continue to use the free service for now until I can find a better service else where.

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