AOL Goes Bit.ly
URL shortener Bit.ly raises $10M from AOL Ventures, others. Bitly.Pro now with over 3,000 customers; http://eicker.at/d
Tagged: Bit.ly Pro Toggle Comment Threads | Keyboard Shortcuts
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Gerrit Eicker
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Gerrit Eicker
Bitly.Pro
Bit.ly Pro moves to an open beta, launches self-service site. Two tiers: free and enterprise edition; http://j.mp/d238WY
Gerrit Eicker
Bit.ly Pro
Bit.ly reacts on Fb.me and Goo.gl by going Pro: offers publishers custom URLs, improved analytics; http://j.mp/7Yh5WP
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Gerrit Eicker
Bit.ly: “The Pro service provides custom short URLs powered by bit.ly. Publishers and bloggers will be able to use their own short domain names to point to pages on their sites. … We’re also excited to be introducing a unique real-time dashboard that will provide publishers with even more information about their bit.ly traffic. It’s a real-time view of how a given publisher’s content is being distributed across networks like Twitter, Facebook, and MySpace and services like email, SMS, and instant messenger.”
NYT: “The new Goo.gl service is a direct attack on Bit.ly, a URL shortener developed in-house at Betaworks Studio. Bit.ly has fast become the de facto link shortener on Twitter and many third-party Twitter clients, and the service even raised a $2 million round of venture financing from investors that included Alpha Tech Ventures, the software industry pioneer Mitch Kapor and the early Google investor Ron Conway. – Bit.ly didn’t wait long before striking back at mighty Google. Late Monday, the company announced that it will begin creating custom URLs for a number of Web sites and publishers, including Microsoft’s Bing search engine, The New York Times, Associated Content, The Huffington Post, The Wall Street Journal, The Onion and Meebo.”
TC: “The appeal for publishers to use their own branded short URLs is that it acts like a verified link. Consumers who are familiar with the brand can learn to trust those links. In contrast, anything can be behind the generic short URLs, although bit.ly is taking steps to fight spam and malware abuse. Facebook with fb.me appears to be doing no more than just creating its own trusted short link for Facebook pages. Google, on the other hand, could easily expand goo.gl into a generic URL shortening service. Goo.gl launched only for Feedburner and Google Toolbar, but it is being used to shorten links from any and all domains. – Google was rumored to be sniffing around bit.ly earlier this year, but no acquisition ever materialized. Maybe it was just doing its homework.”
VB: “The analytics, meanwhile, offer a much more in-depth view of where and when people are clicking on a Bit.ly link. Right now, if a user creates a Bit.ly link and posts it on Twitter, they can see how many people clicked on the link from their tweet, and how many people clicked on it overall. The pro service adds tools such as a chart of when those clicks occurred, as well as a geographic map and list of websites showing where visitors came from.”
Bit.ly: “What features are included in the free bit.ly Pro? 1. Whitelabel service for a custom short URL, with up to 10,000 shorten requests a day. 2. The bit.ly Pro dashboard, which rolls up analytics about the most viral content from your domain. 3. The bit.ly button, which lets users share articles on Twitter or Facebook from your site, using your custom short URL. – What features are included in the Enterprise edition? The paid service includes the following: 1. custom short URLs, buttons, and dashboards for multiple domains. 2. advanced dashboard features, including additional analytics and 3rd-party application support. 3. end-to-end branding – if you shorten a link at bit.ly, or use bit.ly on a Twitter client such as TweetDeck, you’ll notice that when you shorten or share an article from theonion.com (for example), it will resolve to an onion.com short URL instead of a bit.ly-branded URL. This will result in both greater transparency for end users about link destinations and in millions of additional brand mentions for publishers in the bit.ly stream. 4. a customer service and support plan. – What do I need to set up bit.ly Pro? To sign up for either version of bit.ly Pro, you need three things: 1. A registered bit.ly username. 2. A short domain that you own and manage, for custom URL shortening. 3. The domain that you wish to monitor in our real-time dashboard. – What about my existing short URLs created under bit.ly or j.mp? All of the statistics associated with your bit.ly or j.mp username will be preserved under your bit.ly Pro account. Once you have a custom domain setup under bit.ly Pro, those hashes migrate seamlessly to your custom domain (i.e. if you created the URL crainsnewyork.c… under your existing username, under bit.ly Pro, the URL http://mycustom.domain/1234 would redirect to the same destination with the same statistics when you look at the associated info page).”