Outside of social media, do you use shortcut URLs to refer to any page of your website? I find myself using customized shortcut URLs a lot these days even in ordinary email.

yes, both in email and even in our live chat with customers rather than posting a 120 character link, we have shortcut links ready for posting.

When referring to affiliate programs, the shortcut link is also nice as you're sure you get the credit for the referral when they click it.

I use bit.ly all the time for postings, but never on forums as users generally want to see the link rather than masked going to a place they don't know.

But what about anchor text and SEO benefits with shortcut URLs? Are there any benefits at all when SEO is in question?

not when you bring SEO into the mix. I've never heard anyone using shortcut URLs to help SEO.

Actually I haven't use shortcut URL before. But I agree with some guys said above. It is so easy and convenient on Livechat ,emails or anything else but never not here forums or those websites owning a high reputation.

I probably should, but I currently don't use shortcuts - not to see I never will.

I like using shortcut URLs as well. I generally use tinyurl. There have been times when someone asked me to post the entire link though, so they could see where they were going.

I forgot to mention that I use WordPress plugin that shorten URLs of comments. It is much more elegant to have shorter text that won't break your theme design.

Sometimes I use it, it's just much comfortable

Just like handsonhosting, I use bit.ly most often. What I like about bit.ly is that if your shortening a Facebook URL, what you get is on.fb.me/abcd instead of bit.ly/abcd.

Interestingly YouTube now allows you to copy a shortened version of their video URL. So, what you get is youtu.be/abcd

I never post long URL's - anywhere (looks untidy). I use bit.ly, makes it look compact and cute!

There are so many short URL websites these days. The market there is so competitive that they have long back started paying for views too.

I think using shortened URL's is more about driving traffic to your website than link building. I don't use URL shortening service very often, but I would when I sell more affiliate products someday.

I use Tinyurl a lot when I need to make a shortcut to share with people. As many as there are, there are some url redirection/shortcut sites that choose the worst subdomains that don't make it much of a shortcut at all. I think I'll try using bit.ly at some point.

In terms of professionalism, I don't think shortcuts are that great, but let's be honest- all the good urls are taken. You either have to be extremly creative to end up with a short url or refer to these shortcut urls.

I use tinyurl when I need to share very long URL like offer links etc....