If you’re a regular user of twitter, then you’ll know what it means what we say ‘Shorten your URL’. For those who have no idea what twitter is or what it does, here’s a short intro. To find out more, you’ll have to head over to www.twitter.com and test-drive the system yourself. (Warning: addictive stuff).

Anyway, the function of twitter is for people to keep others (their followers, i.e. friends or associates) informed of what they are doing, share links, pictures and information with each other. The key point here is that whatever you intend to write has to be 140 characters or less. Very limiting for people who intend to plug a URL in there. Some URLs are really long and they take up the whole 140 limit all on its own. So, realizing there’s a problem with long URLs, a system called a URL shortening system was designed whereby the URL is shorter than the original but it still leads to the intended web page!

Try shortening a long URL over here. http://tinyurl.com.

Speaking of long URLs, it deals with the very problem mobile phone users have when they want to find a mobile web page. But URL shortening is not the only way that helps mobile phone users get to web pages easily – there’s QR Code (of course!)

Nokia’s S60 smartphone comes with a pre-installed QR Code reader so whenever a user sees a QR Code and is interested in finding more information, they scan the QR Code and will be led to a mobile web page that contains the said info. And that’s just one example. Although many phone models still come without a QR Code reader at this point in time, we suspect that things will change very soon.

We took notice of mobile tiny URL recently. Basically, the service shortens the URL of mobile web pages pretty much the same way tinyurl shortens web URLs. Some say that the mobile tiny URL will render QR Codes useless. Do we think so?

In our personal opinion, nothing beats the QR Code because it’s so versatile that you can place it ANYWHERE….on packaging, printed materials, websites, t-shirts, scarfs, mugs, etc. On the other hand, a mobile tiny URL has limitations as to where they can be placed!

So, will mobile tiny URL ever rank better than QR Codes? Is mobile tiny URL a threat to the QR Code system? Absolutely not.