 So, today students in this module, I will talk about link shortening. So what is a link? Link is basically the address, the URL, the complete location of a certain page, it could be a video, it could be a PDF file, it could be different things which are available over the internet and of course it could be nested in certain directories also. Now link shortening is required because for example, when you have embedded certain things and the entire address is in the text string which is the URL, Universal Resource Locator, it's very long. Why do we need it? The reason being that the internet works on the IP or internet protocol. Now that protocol consists of an IP address. Now that address consists of numbers, it's very difficult for people to remember numbers. To corresponding to the numbers, there is a text string and that contains all the information required to access a certain page, a certain document, a certain file or whatever you have placed on the internet. Now that text length creates problems in certain older systems used to create the problem and would use to truncate that or move it. So that creates problems. Now with the advent of Twitter which has a certain limit of characters, it's about like I believe 1, 4, 0, so that becomes a problem. You cannot put in long links in your Twitter message, it would not allow. So we need the link shortener. So what the link shortener does, it reduces or actually it replaces the long, ugly looking text with something which is very nice, clean and beautiful as I show you on the next slide. Now as you can see at the top in the box is a long URL. It is very difficult to type and it will not fit in certain messages. It is very ugly and of course why it's long because it also it may contain this URL UTM tags also which are required for certain bookkeeping and certain other information recording etc. So if you look closely at this URL you can see that this is for a YouTube video, right? So the word the link shortener does is replaces this entire string with something which is very nice and which is very clean and you can put innovative text over here also. You can write something very fancy, beautiful over here which conveys a lot of meaning over here. And these two they are same, they are not different, they point the same thing and I would suggest that you give it a try. In your PowerPoint slides you will have this URL, the long one, you can just copy paste it and you can try the shorter one also, they point to the same place on YouTube. So that is one benefit of the link shortener, let's go into more details. So what can link shortener do? The link shortener does two things, one of course it shortens the link, the other is masking. What is meant by masking? masking means that it hides whatever is ugly, whatever is long and that is replaced by something which is very nice and clean and that shortener is simple, it beautifies whatever you have replaced the long text with and it allows also tracking of that link also. Now there is one shortcoming possible over here because when I replace the long link or the long URL and I mask it, there may be something malicious stuff behind that or in that URL which has been replaced but that malicious masking is taken care of by different browsers. You know what I am saying, so it could be anything but it could be replaced with something nice, so that is one issue with masking. Now with the link shortening it is good for communication, for example you are in a presentation and somebody asks you that what is the URL of your company, now if you start saying this, this, this, slash, this, slash, this, people will lose track if you only say b.link slash excellent company, everybody knows that. So it is good for communication, it is good for sharing also and as I showed you in the previous slide, data management is innovative, so you come up with a new idea, new company, new product, new service, new concept, so instead of long URLs you replace it with a smaller one. So what can link shortening do? It provides link tracking, link tracking means that I have replaced that long link with a short one and when people click on that link it is recorded, when the click was made, what time, what date and so on, all sort of statistics can be there, so that is link tracking. Other benefit is link retargeting, it means that once somebody clicks on my link I get to know from where they clicked it and I can post and add over there, just like if you are searching for something on Amazon and click on it then you start seeing corresponding advertisements on your screen, that is link retargeting. What is link rotating? Link rotating means that I can do an A slash B analysis, 50% divide or 75, 25% analysis, so for that purpose I can use link shortening and link swapping or changing, for example if I have my link available at 20 places and assuming I can make changes over there and I shift my website to some other place it may not be possible if allowed to make changes at 20 places, but if I was looking at a link shortener I will just take about 10 seconds and make a change at a single place, so when to use link shortener posting link across multiple websites, so I post the link B dot link slash data man across 20 sites and if the location of the video changes I don't have to worry, I just go to blink and change the address over there at the remaining places the address remains as before, linking from one page to another page even in my website, now if I start changing the location of the pages in my hierarchy move them up or down then I am bound to make mistakes, however if I have been using a link shortener at my home page with reference to my home page then I can only need to worry about making changes at quite a few places very little places because at the remaining the reference is with reference to the home page with the link shortener and finally this point over here is that it is not mandatory that you should be always using link shortener because if I send emails to my friends and my colleagues who know who I am who trust me okay then there may not be any need to use a link shortener because if they see a long link they know that this is coming from a trusted friend or a known person so they can click on it without any fear of any malicious results or happenings, so that's all I have for this module thank you for your time.