Bit.ly starts with a simple idea, shorten URLs. You pass a URL to them, then they give you a randomly generated short URL.
Bit.ly is a very useful tool for shortening your URLs for Twitter or easy sharing with clients and co-workers. The Twitter community has embraced Bit.ly as top dog in the URL shortening world. There is great competition for them, so the hope is that we will see some real innovation in the shortening and tracking of URLs.
There are more features aside from URL shortening that Bit.ly provides, some of which you may be missing out on.
Track Your Click Throughs
Whenever you add a URL to Bit.ly, it is immediately added to their database of URLs. After the first person clicks your link, Bit.ly’s tracking kicks in. They will count every click on your URLs. They also will provide you with the cumulative total of clicks from every user who has shortened and shared the URL you are looking at.
Find recently used links quickly
I often will post a link, then go looking for it well after it is buried in my Twitter stream. Bit.ly serves a great purpose by letting you quickly scan through pages of your most recently used links. Not only that, but they allow you to rename the links in the lists, so you can find them easier!
Get an idea how much traffic your competition is getting
Since you can submit any URL you want through your bit.ly account, this means that if you see your competition submit a URL through bit.ly you can track it too! All you have to do is get the URL that you are redirected to by bit.ly and shorten it with your account. Immediately, it should show up in your account with the number of clicks that the full-size URL has received.
API
Bit.ly allows you to push and pull information with their API. This is invaluable to applications like Twindicate and Tweetdeck, who need to provide the shortest URLs possible when writing Twitter Posts.
I could not write this list without sending out some good vibes by requesting some features. What Bit.ly needs:
Quick Search
I would love to have a search mode. There would be a search box, where you could type anything and Bit.ly would search through your data and return matches based on URL and title. This would make finding links even easier and inspect links further back in time.
Better Link Title Special Character Scrubbing
Nearly every time I submit a blog article through Bit.ly and see it in the list it looks like this:
Most Recently clicked view
Man, this would be living! If you could see which links were most recently clicked, it would be easier to find out if a link of yours is doing well even after it is buried by more recently added links. What would you do if you were the last to find out that some link you posted actually went viral? What would your clients do if they found out through some chain email instead of from you?
Aggregated Mine/Theirs stats
This feature would probable be just for me to use for bragging, but having the stat of “lifetime clickthroughs” on my account would be pretty cool. This way I could see how much or how little I actually contribute to the Social Community through my links. Since nearly all of the links I send out are Bit.ly links, it would be a pretty good gauge.
Ninja Side feature idea: You could create a game based on the sharing of Bit.ly links and who else shared the link.
API Feature: Pull more than one link’s info at a time
I really very much want to more fully integrate Bit.ly into one of my projects. Being able to pull a mass amount of data instead of one at a time, would make what I want to do possible.
It would be sweet to be able to get all the links for a specific user. But, if I could just send in 15 URLS in one request and get data returned for all of them at once, that would make my day.
Are you using Bit.ly yet? Why not?
Tags: api, application, bit.ly, blog, blogs, click throughs, co workers, cumulative total, first person, good vibes, innovation, ly, nbsp, top dog, traffic, twitter, URL, url shortening, url shortening services
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