Under the MLA style guide at least, URLs of Web publictions are no longer needed in Works Cited entries. Marj Associate Professor Marjorie Kibby, B.Ed, M.A, Ph.D, FHERDSA Head of Discipline: Film, Media and Cultural Studies School of Humanities and Social Science The University of Newcastle Callaghan NSW 2308 Australia Marj.Kibby@newcastle.edu.au +61 2 49216604

...

...

Sharon Haleva Amir <sharon@trebcon.com> 23/07/11 12:42 AM >>>

Yana, the only advantage I can think of regarding the usage of shortened URL is if you're writing an article and there is a words' limitation (as long as the limitation refers to the bibliography/footnotes as well as the article itself), as sometimes the URLs can be quite long. I think that the need to shorten texts (for twitting etc.) was the basic rational for establishing such services.