Atlanta station using URL shortener

We’ve talked before about vanity URL shorteners and recently noticed that WXIA-TV, the NBC affiliate in Atlanta, is using a subdomain under its main domain as a URL shortener: on.11alive.com.

WXIA-TV appears to have been using the shortener, albeit somewhat inconsistently (some bit.ly and cot.ag links are mixed in its Twitter stream, for example) for several months.

11Alive’s use of “on” as its subdomain mirrors the one used at both MSNBC and CNN, who use on.msnbc.com and on.cnn.com, respectively.

Other TV news organization use URL shorteners, as well, including Fox News, the Weather Channel, the Associated Press and “The Today Show.” NBC’s “Rock Center” newsmagazine show also has a URL shortener. We also ran a NewscastTip column on the subject in October 2010. In addition, NewscastStudio has its own URL shortener: nca.st.