Question: Recently there has been a lot of hype about URL Shortening. I guess some URL Shortening services even offer tracking stats. But, doesn't adding one more level of look-up to the original URL affect page ranking in any way? Just curious to know.

Answer: 
It might, right now, but I wouldn't expect that to last for too long. SEO and PageRank are subjects where a lot of guesswork is passed off as wisdom.

If you're that obsessively worried about your PageRank, here's what you do. Take that energy, and put it into creating content that people want to link to. You'll get better results.

People buy stuff. Robots don't.
The criticisms of URL shortening have reached near hysteria. Combine this with SEO guidance that borders on superstition if not outright voodoo and you'll find a lot of (mis)information out there. [URL shortening is a storm in a teacup](http://www.cforcoding.com/2009/06/hysteria-over-url-shortening.html). Don't expect it to make any difference to search engines.