What Is The Difference Between Youtube.com and Youtu.be?
Question
Are you on of those that often visits YouTube to view video clips? If yes, then you’re probably pretty familiar with its web address, Youtube.com . But you may also have noticed a new address Youtu.be, which also offers videos.
So, is there a difference between Youtube.com and Youtu.be?
In fact, there is no difference between Youtube.com and Youtu.be when it comes to the video or service you get, since they are the same thing.
Youtu.be this is just a shortened URL that also belongs to Youtube , and when you visit any link, you will still be taken to the same Youtube home page .
Shortening web addresses is a good way to make it easier for people to remember. Web addresses grew longer as more and more people took possible combinations.
This is not a big problem for Youtube, since Youtube is already very popular, and this abbreviation has just reached a three-letter abbreviation. What Youtube was probably after is one of two things.
First, to protect the web address from being hijacked by someone else. Other people can use it to trick other people into thinking they have visited Youtube and embed malware into their computers.
Second, follow the trend of using domain hacks or non-traditional domain names; several examples include del.icio.us, blo.gs, itun.es, and goo.gl.
Youtube.com uses a very popular top-level domain. com or TLD. On the other hand, Youtu.be accepts the domain. be. This is not one of the top-level domains, but one of the country-specific domains; be is a domain reserved for Belgium, to be precise.
In fact, there is no rule that says that people from other countries can use country-specific domains. A good example of this is the Tuvalu ccTLD, which is .tv. Tuvalu is a little-known island nation, but their domain is used mostly by television stations because it is the same as an abbreviation for television.
Why did Google Create YouTu.be?
It’s all the rage: shortening links to make sure you don’t have too many precious characters counting on those useful URLs you’re ‘sharing, as well as giving you an idea of what you’re about to click. Use AutoShare to connect your YouTube account to social media sites like Twitter and Google Reader to see this feature in action. Then, if, for example, you prefer a YouTube video, the action gets syndicated to your network, which will see this shortened edition of the video URL.
So, shortening YouTube URLs as much as possible is crucial so that people can quickly share them on shared sites like Twitter.Google shortened the video URL by 15 characters by running the domain name YouTu.be. Check out the chart below. It shows how the YouTu.be URL is 15 characters shorter than the corresponding YouTube.com URL.
It is common for popular websites to grab other domain names and point it towards their site. Still, you should be vigilant about phishing through impersonation of a popular site. After the page loads, you should check the address. Even if you typed in youtu.be, it would still say youtube.com in the address bar after the page loads.
CREDIT
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