History of Link Shorteners
Before there were music retail landing pages, like the ones from Metablocks, Linkfire and Gupta’s Smarturl, there were only link shorteners. URLs play a big role on the Internet. They are the connectors of the web. URLs have come a long way since their inception over 20 years ago. Especially with the creation of the URL Shortener, which has come to play an important part in retaining the importance and usefulness of the URL in our ever-evolving digital landscape. URL Shorteners have moved from simply being a tool to shorten your link, to an integral tracking tool used to refine marketing initiatives and drive brand growth, and now have lead to the creation and evolution of retail link pages. Here is where link shorteners step it! Kevin Gilbertson, created the first URL shortener, TinyURL, in 2002. The popularity of TinyURLs quickly influenced the creation of at least 100 similar websites. As the web has developed, URLs are becoming longer, so URL Shorteners were becoming really useful, especially when it comes to music!