One reason I use shortlinks is to see how many clicks something gets. 

http://bit.ly/chlngrt, a shortlink for Accidental Lessons: Reflections on the Challenger Tragedy, has had nine clicks in the 47 minutes that have passed since I posted it, and then tweeted pointage to it.

I'm posting this here only to mark something in time. Not because I'm drawing conclusions from it.

Perspective: yesterday my Flickr site got more than 8500 visits.