URL shorteners, which allow users to condense long Web addresses, are a dime an oddly named dozen.
The tools, which have been soaring in popularity thanks to sites like Twitter and Tumblr where every character counts, have been competing in a popularity contest with no clear victors.
But one service, Bit.ly has pulled ahead of the others, at least on Twitter.
According to data collected by TweetMeme, a service that compiles the most popular links shared through Twitter, Bit.ly is now used for 46 percent of all the abbreviated links shared through the microblogging platform. TinyURL, the granddaddy of URL shorteners, trails with 44 percent. By comparison, in late March, Tweetmeme calculated that TinyURL made up 75 percent of shared links and Bit.ly, 13 percent.
The big reason for the change in market share: Twitter recently changed its default link shortener from TinyURL, a tool developed in 2002, to Bit.ly.
Twitter, which had no formal partnership with TinyURL, has remained mum on why it made its decision, but it may have swapped its default services because of outages at TinyURL, which rendered unusable the short links provided by the service. Bit.ly says it has multiple layers of redundancy and is establishing an archive to help counter downtime.
Reliability is especially important if Twitter starts indexing links shared through its service, as CNet reported Wednesday.
In addition, Bit.ly, which recently raised $2 million in venture financing, tracks real-time statistics on how many times links are clicked and where users are coming from — information that could be valuable to companies and brands looking to measure the impact of an e-mail message, link, tweet or mention online.
16 Comments
twitter can’t tweet a business model that generates revenue and now you have companies providing free services to twitter getting 2 million in VC funding. in fact, they are competing for the honor of providing 24/7 real time network support to a non-revenue generating behemoth. this is starting to look like 2001 all over again.
— David TriebwasserInteresting stats,
— TarekYou can check the stats of this very article: http://bit.ly/info/18gmMw
Fascinating stuff! Twitter is just awesome, it’s the greatest invention of all time. The New York Times, CNN, Fox, all the movie studios, authors, artists and everyone else doing anything creative might as well just pack it in. I heard someone just cured cancer by Twittering. Seriously.
— NicholasThere are better URL shorteners than either tinurl or bit.ly. My favorite is http://go2.me — it provides URL shortening plus commenting.
— RoyIt’s no surprise that bit.ly has the best look and feel.
Fundamentally, no matter how small the product or functionality consumers like a polished product.
In the same way I choose easyjet over ryanair I use bit.ly because it does what I need it to do and looks and feels good.
— BarryThanks for the additional coverage!
As many of you have read today – the coverage for Bit.ly increased since yesterday. Marshall of RWW – http://bit.ly/bNCYH – probably had the best write up I’ve seen all day, and Erick over at TechCrunch – http://bit.ly/18b7E0 – wasn’t bad at all.
Rex
— Rex DixonBit.ly Community Mgr.
Twitter possibly dropping a service because of reliability problems is just a hoot.
— Kenneth BurnsI thought the domain with the shortest footprint would win the battle, other factors being equal (which I accept are not).
But no mention of is.gd ? Why not?
Disclaimer: I have no financial affiliation with is.gd at the moment.
— K OnePretty cool stuff! And that was an interesting comment before that linked to the stats on bit.ly.
I use tweetdeck and it has an option to shorten a url, and uses tinyurl or bit.ly, whatever you prefer, really – I also downloaded the tool for my browser to automatically shorten urls when i just paste it into twitter.
So, it doesn’t really matter to me, it’s not like it taste better, or it’s faster – at some point, when price comes in as a factor – THEN maybe I’ll make my decision!
@Vickie_Smith
— VickieKenneth Burns, You’re a funny man.. :)
— preetam mukherjeegood one..!
Nicholas (#3),
I also heard that Twitter cured cancer. But did you know it also brought peace to the Middle East? Here’s the transcript:
@Netanyahu: Let’s stop fighting
@Palestinians: Ok lol.
Amazing! I only wish the Times would devote more space to Twitter. I swear we don’t hear enough about this life-altering service.
— C. Larityso what? does either bit.ly or tinyurl (or twitter for that matter) actually make money?
— jamesWas a tinyurl user at start, later more frequently on bit.ly. Simply it helps when it comes to longer msg+links, stats tracker, available in most desktop clients I ever used/’am still using. A matter of preference.
@wchingya
— Ching YaSocial Media/Blogging
The reason for the switch to bit.ly is mainly because of the shared VC’s behind these 2 companies.
— JetlowDoesn’t the NY Times know how to investigate a story anymore? Not wonder RWW, Mashable, TechCrunch et al are eating their lunch.
The shakeout of the free URL shorteners is already starting to begin. The casualty announced this week was tr.im, which was an excellent service with nice tracking capabilities…it was easily on a par with bit.ly although obviously lacked the influence/perceived credibility to be the beneficiary of the default Twitter shortener decision.
To tr.im’s credit, all existing URLs will continue to be served until year-end, although (at this time) users cannot get access to their URL list/stats history. It’s possible someone may buy the service although the current owners (Th Nambu Network) seem to have exhausted that option before deciding to call it quits.With tr.im gone, it seems that bit.ly would be the natural migration destination for tr.im users.
— Fred KauberHello? Not one comment addressed the basic fact that Bit.ly is shorter than TinyUrl.com
if the goal is to shorten the # of characters, then TinyUrl.com is TOO LONG
— Benny F.