Quickest Way to Tweet a Link

During my early explorations of Twitter, I inquired as to the quickest way to tweet a link; I often found myself wanting to share, but had yet to find an efficient method of doing so. To my dismay, however, I received no responses (so much for crowd-sourcing). So, I began researching methods of tweeting links; I found that tweeting a link was easy, but the tricky part was shortening the URL before tweeting it.

While there is a plethora of ways to shorten a URL, I found existing methods to be inadequate: most required navigating to a new page/opening a separate application; text needed to be copied then pasted; or, a link was not shortened until after it was tweeted, thus making character counts inaccurate. So what’s a geek to do? Program a tool to her specifications, of course!

Introducing ReplacURLr

• What: A Firefox add-on that replaces the URL in your location bar with a shortened URL of either the current page (via the toolbar button) or an in-page link (via the right-click context menu). The short URL is also automatically copied to the clipboard.
• Why: To shorten a link without annoying confirmation/options dialogs or having to navigate to a different page. The short URL is input directly into the location bar so that the link can then be tweeted (via TwitterBar), without out any copying & pasting.
• Who: Any Firefox user wanting a quick method for shortening URLs, particularly those using TwitterBar.
• Where: ReplacURLr is currently available for download at the Mozilla Add-on Directory.
• When: Now!

In summary, the quickest way to tweet link is to shorten it with ReplacURLr and then tweet it with TwitterBar – two clicks, it can’t get any easier.

If you give ReplacURLr a try, I would appreciate any and all constructive feedback (if you’re just mean, I will send my flying monkeys after you – consider yourself warned). Happy tweeting!

Links:
ReplacURLr
TwitterBar