Well, that was fast. No more than a day or two after Twitter switched over to bit.ly as its default link shortener (from TinyURL), bit.ly is now the most popular URL shortening service. According to statistics published by Tweetmeme, bit.ly now accounts for 46 percent of all the short URLs on Twitter over the past 24 hours, while TinyURL’s share is down to 43 percent. Just over a month ago, TinyURL had an overwhelming 75 percent share to bit.ly’s 13 percent share. According to Tweetmeme, bit.ly overtook TinyURL sometime last night.
URL shortening services have come into vogue along with the Twitter’s rise because of its 140-character limit. Bit.ly, TinyURL, and others condense the links with shorter ones that are Twitter-friendly and then redirect to the original pages. Standardizing on one URL shortening service that can provide Twitter with the underlying data about the pages being linked to could help Twitter with its plans to start indexing those links. It is all about search and mining the thought stream.
Bit.ly came out of Betaworks, which was also an investor in Summize—the startup Twitter bought when it realized it needed its own real-time search engine
I wonder how much bit.ly is worth now.
(Hat tip to Jenna Wortham).
I thought facebook apps/widgets were a stupid business…but boy was I fooled. URL shortening services? Come on people! This certainly doesn’t showcase the creativity and innovation the web allows people to offer to the world
you mean you find nothing fresh in building a business that is built off a business that is built off a business?
aside from the vc, how are any of them making money?
Dont know how Bit.ly makes money. I didn’t see Linkbee up there but it seems as if they have quite a high amount of usage and they make money on banner as well as interstitial advertising once the links are clicked on
yeah, why isnt linkbee up there? they dominate alexa and quantcast (bit.ly doesnt even compare to the size of linkbee, or even linkbucks for that matter).
When they’re flipped, they’ll make a lot. In bit.ly’s case, it will make a lot after Twitter is sold. Twitter will buy Bit.ly in exchange for Twitter stock, and then when Twitter is sold, bit.ly will make a great deal of money.
Warning: if Twitter is not bought, then bit.ly cannot make enough to meet it’s liquidation preferences. But it’s really a moot point because the scenario I just described has a 95% chance of coming to pass.
So the entire business model hinges on an acquisition?? Hmm, that´s a big roll of the dice especially when there is no clear revenue model….
After its romance with Twitter, Bit.ly has really grown big. It is exploding in a phenomenal scale and is on the verge of becoming even a threat to Digg.
This article is meh..Isn’t it obvious that if twitter switched to bit.ly as “default” provider, then bit.ly is indeed going to be the most used service on twitter. The author has falsely (or in his ignorance) implied earlier that bit.ly has taken over TinyURL in terms of market share across the internet. However, these stats are only about their share on twitter..
How many people use URL shortening services outside of twitter? It’s not a smart ass response (tho I’ve been known to make them
I’m genuinely interested.
I’m not saying they’ve got a monetization scheme, but without an insiders view, we’ll never know.
They might be laughing all the way to the bank right now with some amazing creativity that we aren’t seeing.
TechCrunch is becoming the US Weekly of tech. Overhyped news of rather mundane useless stuff.
“Just over a month ago, TinyURL had an overwhelming 75 percent share to TinyURL’s 13 percent share.”
Huh? Don’t you guys even proofread anything? This is sloppy, sloppy, sloppy journalism.
TechCrunch Hater, their sentence makes perfect sense. You see, a month ago, TinyURL had 75% while TinyURL had a pitiful 13%! C’mon!
Man, could it get any clearer!?! Geez… n00b!
of course not….what do you think they are, journalists?
they are a bunch of fat guys in their underwear.
See CrunchCam.
They’re actually nicely dressed hipsters of both genders. I expect they are also wearing underwear, but who can tell under those hipster clothes!
Some nice tighty whities.
Schonfeld strikes again.
do url shortners take away mask linking stats from search engines like google? ie, i url shorten a link, and google won’t know about it. or does google follow the redirects?
yes, google follows them as long as they are using a 301 style redirect.
and there is NO WAY that pie graph is right… qzip.in has at least 10% or so of the market.
You have TinyURL with both 75% and 13%.
But why doesn’t Twitter just do their own? I.e. allow you to send in whatever length URL you want and it would out put it similar to an @ or # tag.
So maybe >>URL?
I hope all of these URL shortening services will consider escrow of their databases to archival services and implement preserved permanent URLs (PURL)
http://en.wikip...esource_Locator
I’m fed up leaving my link about creating easily your own short URL’s with WordPress every day at TC, because everyday there seems to be an article ’bout short URL’s…
Unless you have a short domain name and your blog run from the front directory, url shortener is still better.
Besides, as evidenced by the other services low percentage on twitter, most short urls on twitter are shortened by twitter not the user.
Additionally In my experience most shortened urls posted on twitter are 3rd party content that didn’t provide a short url to begin with. Bit.ly surpassing tinyurl in a day supports that as the typical situation.
stupid idea as a business, horrible vc investment, crappy subject to write about, otherwise a great article!
they should offer bit.ly peanuts to buy them, or spend a few hours and create their own…
nice search and topic filtering: http://www.tweetag.com
Mashable just had an article on the weirdest URL shorteners:
How to create your own twitter portal: http://www.tweetag.com
What’s the business model? Maybe Google buys the data base of URLs as a cheaper alternative to crawling? Seriously, how does tinyurl make money?
After you give them the url you want shortened, they display banner ads on the “success” page where you can copy your shortened url.
BUT, not when using Twitter. They do it “automatically” … so no ad impression, click-thru, traffic …… and if that’s what is now making up the majority of their traffic, then that = no $. They are banking on the back end sale, or have negotiated some sort of fee to manage the entire service. Probably the former.
My question to TechCrunch and others is why is this valuation of bit.ly not being openly and loudly ridiculed? It’s plainly absurd, and you’re not doing your job as a journalist if all you’re doing is parroting what ignorant VCs think this thing is worth.
Actually I think TinyURL.com is still the biggest in the web, and bit.ly is biggest only in Twitter. Misleading headline.
And of course it’s not really a surprise that bit.ly overtook TinyURL in one day, since they started converting URLs to bit.ly automatically… what other outcome would you expect to see?
It’s probably a good assumption though. The majority of people who shorten URLs are the ones who use services such as twitter, if they see someone using bit.ly because of twitter, they’ll use it themselves. It’ll probably slowly overtake tinyurl worldwide now, it’s not as if tinyurl offers anything more, people are suckers for features. Even though anyone and their grandma can setup a shorturl site.
Yeah, surely… probably it’s just a matter of time. In fact bit.ly seems to offer quite a bit more. I’m really happy with the statistics they offer – this is clearly not “everyone and their mom doing url shortener in 30 minutes”. The stats alone made me want to use bit.ly for posting all links from now on.
Here’s an example of the info page: http://bit.ly/info/xvf … number of clicks, where they came from, tweets, etc. Simple but powerful.
Well well Twitter giving rise to new concepts like URL shortening services and all of them seems to be having a piece of market share.
oh yeah, how exciting to be king of the shortener’s — wippie!
Rereading before posting blogs really should be standard procedure. Can’t recall seeing as many small silly errors on techcrunch before, but now they seem common place.
But I do agree with a lot of other people, the title does insinuate internet-wide popularity versus twitter popularity.
i prefer is.gd or tr.im because of that one less character.
Erick,
Thanks for the write up. I think you and Marshall (RWW) – http://bit.ly/bNCYH – are the only two people that really “get it”.
No worries, no one back in the day understood the true impact that Napster would end up having either!
Rex
Bit.ly Community Mgr.
bit.ly for the win, always been my favorite! Short urls, easy to use, and no damn freakin iframes!
:thumbups: all the way, nice work bit.ly team!
Wow, I can’t believe TinyURL has been passed. I always use them and they’ve been the default for so long…crazy!
Now on mini-seedcamp in ljubljana im presenting my project. It is also a URL shortening service but with built in advertising network. Look at my page, you’ll see how you can make money from URL shortening. Easy to use, statistics, advertising and ofc url shortening, our main services on LongURL. Im not sure about bit.ly and other url shortening services what is their business plan
How do they make money?
It’s been rumoured that these services skim a % of the top trafficked affiliate url’s.
Just a conspiracy theory. What do I know.
Less more !
Is it possible to shorten a shorten url?
I switched to bit.ly last year when tinyurl kept failing but I assume most ppl just use the twitter default. I do agree with some of the other posts here…these might be cool little features but it’s by no means a business.
I’d really like to see TechCrunch evaluate these “companies” a bit deeper and give their view if they are a Feature, Product or Company. Bit.ly is IMO a feature and a non-differentiated one at that. So they should sell if they get an offer and right now would be a good time.
For those wanting to track any outgoing links for personal use or business, Bit.ly and others are essential. Tracking clicks, time, region…. all important stuff when people are trying to figure out how to “measure” results and reach.
These services are only in the early stages and the simple shortening of links is the least of what they can provide people and organizations who want to share content.
Seems like a lot of people are missing the point.
I still like http://tr.im for URL shortening. The stats are nicer to look at and easier to read than bit.ly, and obviously it’s one character shorter. They also have a really nice Firefox extension.
There are tons of older url shorteners…
URL shortner is the new Twitter, for TechCrunch now.
I use stupid.ly on twitter
URL shorteners could really screw up the web in a few years.
Soon everything will be connected via faux links. Then one service will go under — and all those links will be dead. Then another service will go down. And another, and so on.
In five years the rage is going to be URL Expanders:
“Need to figure out what that TinyURL used to be? No problem! Just visit WTFisaURL.com…”
Brilliant
If you need really short URLs for a URL you link to often, and are ready to pay for it, I’ve started http://hé.pl . 14 characters URLs are available. Sure it’s not a competition to bit.ly, rather a complementary service.
Rb
Ive never even heard of “bit.ly”.
I still prefer “tinyurl” because it makes sense grammatically.
“bit.ly” sounds like some obscure, foreign based, virus infested server /network.
Congrats to the bit.ly crew! Thats a huge thing you’ve accomplished.
linkbee isn’t even listed? they are top 1000 on alexa… and do way more traffic then most of the shorteners… weird.
why do people use this when there is adjix and linkbee??
Um. ur.ly ???
This is a feature, not a business.