Shorter URLs for SkyDrive files with bit.ly support

Microsoft SkyDrive is one of the cloud storage service that launched years ago but almost forgotten by Microsoft until recently. Microsoft started adding features to SkyDrive just before the launch of much rumored Google Drive, and last month introduced desktop clients. SkyDrive offers 7GB of free storage now, but if you are a long term SkyDrive user you have 25GB of free online storage space.

You can share SkyDrive files with your friends or across social networks using links like any other cloud storage service. But the problem with SkyDrive links is they are unusually long. If you share these long links in Email or in some forums chances are that they are truncated to shorter ones by breaking the link in question in the process. Microsoft admits in a blogpost on Windows Team Blog, that their SkyDrive links are not only long but they are ugly, and they don’t fit in a tweet normally.

The solution to this problem, Microsoft came up with few options, first one, the long links are now shortened 40%, but they are still messy links. The second option is to use their short URL service, which they initially launched for a way to share Window Phone image links in twitter. The short URL service is available at http://sdrv.ms. You can use it to shorten SkyDrive links for easier sharing across social networks and by email.

Microsoft has also OpenGraph support to URLs, so next time when you share these links on Facebook, a thumbnail preview will be generated automagically.

The short URL service is powered by Bit.ly, that means you can get the statistics for the short links you generated with the service. You can track how many times your link is clicked and where, things like that.

Have you tried SkyDrive, if not you should try this service it offers 7GB of free storage to new users and their paid plans are cheaper that the competitors like Google Drive, Dropbox etc. (Windowsteam blog, via gHacks)