I guess I still don't understand the purpose of URL shortners. Isn't this what markup is for?<p>Hey, check out this <a href='http;//www.example.com/foo/bar/foo/?param1=foo&param2=bar&key=foo&page=bar&something&something&something'> page!</a><p>I get it that twitter has the 140 character limit, but isn't this something twitter should have solved themselves?<p>Why do these news articles seem to pop up every other day? Why is bit.ly offering a "pro" service?