Similar to Twitter, world’ most popular video sharing site Youtube announced its own URL shortening service – youtu.be.

URL Shortening, a service popularized by micro-blogging site twitter.com is a technique to reduce the length of the URL to make it simple.

For eg a lengthy URL like http://www.zonshare.com/magazine/2009/12/speed-up-your-windows-with-readyboost/ can be converted to http://bit.ly/5wxp7h.

To use the new youtu.be service simply replace the http://www.youtube.com/watch?v= with http://youtu.be/ .

For eg after converting http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=14swhcMkMqA will become http://youtu.be/14swhcMkMqA.

Unlike popular URL shortening service sites like bit.ly and tinyurl.com, youtu.be will work only with youtube.com urls.