'Net Features : bit.ly pro

5 Billion Reasons to use Bit.ly

Mike Phillips — Fri, 04 Jun 2010 15:51:00 GMT

According to the official bit.ly blog, the link-shortening service is nearing 5 billion clicks per month. Helping matters is that Twitter replaced TinyURL with bit.ly as the default link shortener.

Why does this matter to Web professionals? Trust and familiarity. Short links are great but also mysterious. Think of it this way -- you're more likely to get a click on a link that consumers are used to seeing. It's like the difference between displaying a link to a .com and a .net, .org, .info or any of the other "unfamiliar" extensions.

Sign up with a professional bit.ly account and you can customize small links even more, such as including your brand or website name in the link. You will also receive deeper analytics.

And if there's a hotter trend on the Web than any other, it's video. Bit.ly has that covered as well, with bitly.tv -- a page showing the millions of Web videos being shared with bit.ly links. So I guess that's 5,000,000,001 reasons to use bit.ly.

Bit.ly Gets New, Improved Features

Mike Phillips — Tue, 04 May 2010 18:45:00 GMT

Bit.ly, one of the most popular link-shortening services, has undergone an overhaul, including some new functions and improved features that will prove very valuable to Web professionals. It's been dubbed the "fugu edition."

The bit.ly sidebar addition (can be added to your toolbar) allows publishers to quickly shorten links while on any website then post those links to Twitter, Facebook, and through e-mail. The sidebar also shows current conversations around bit.ly links.

New tracking features will give deeper insight into how your links are shared. Start by adding "+" to the end of any bit.ly link. Also, users can now see total bit.ly clicks for any given link. That is, how many times a Web page has been clicked through from a bit.ly link regardless of who created and posted the link, in addition to the clicks generated from your link. This might be a good way to test the effectiveness of your copy when sharing a bit.ly link -- if the link is popular on the Web, but your link is not getting clicks, the copy surrounding your link might need some work or perhaps your timing is off.

A public timeline is available, so users can see your bit.ly link history. This timeline is sharable as a URL, RSS feed or can be exported as a list and could prove very valuable as a way for users to filter content from their most trusted and valuable resources. For publishers, this is could be a nice promotional tool to achieve better branding with avid users.

A new management feature pulls together the most critical data on one page, showing some basic statistics of each link plus expandable links for quick access to more details.

For those seeking even more functionality, bitly.Pro offers custom short links, deeper and real-time analytics and easy integration with other Web tools. Those interested can apply for the bitly.Pro beta program.

bit.ly Pro Going Self-Service (Open Beta)

Pete Prestipino — Mon, 08 Feb 2010 17:49:00 GMT

URL shortening service bit.ly announced last week that since the launch of its Pro-level service, the demand has been so high that they will soon be releasing a self-service website for companies interesting in setting up their own Bit.ly-esque service.

The bit.ly Pro service has two tiers – a free version and an enterprise edition.

Users of the free Pro service will have access to a white label version of bit.ly for a custom short URL (with up to 10,000 shorten requests a day), an analytics dashboard, and finally can use/promote their own bit.ly button, so users can share content on social media sites like Twitter and Facebook using a custom short URL.

The enterprise edition of bit.ly provides all the same features as the free service, and additional dashboard features, including additional analytics, third-party application support, and end-to-end branding, as well as a customer service and support plan.

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