All Entries Tagged With: "bit.ly"
Facebook Blocks All Bit.ly Links [Updated]
Palo Alto, California-based social networking site Facebook has blocked and marked Bit.ly services as “abusive,” resulting in dead links. Currently, sharing webpage through Bit.ly links is impossible. Users are greeted with a message stating that the service has been flagged by other users as either “abusive or spammy.” Many Facebook users have already expressed their discontent regarding the situation.
The following message is displayed when a Bit.ly link is used:
“This message contains blocked content that has previously been flagged as abusive or spammy. Let us know if you think this is an error.”
Bit.ly Nears 5 Billion Clicks Monthly
If there’s ever been any doubt that link shortening service Bit.ly is doing well, let this next report clear things up. The service, which was initially adopted by micro-blogging service Twitter as the URL shortener of choice had announced that Bit.ly Pro — the professional edition of the service which allows companies to use their own domains for URL shortening — is gaining traction in the commercial market.
Companies such as Yahoo, MySpace, Pepsi, National Public Radio, Scribd, CSPAN, IMDb, the New York Times, Mozilla, Amazon, and Bravo have all hopped on the bandwagon. That’s not all, as another 12,500 publishers have signed up to use the professional version of the service.
Twitter to Launch Its Own URL Shortener
A couple of days ago, we reported that Twitter acquired the twee.tt domain name, which uses .tt — the official country code top-level domain [ccTLD] for Trinidad and Tobago. We wondered whether or not the company was about to launch its own URL shortener, considering that Twitter has been launching many products and native services of its own lately.
Well, we don’t have to wonder anymore, as Twitter Co-Founder and CEO Evan Williams confirmed on Wednesday during the final Q&A session at the Chirp Developer Conference that the company will indeed launch its own URL shortener. He clearly stated that it would be “stupid” not to launch such a feature, given that most Twitter clients already have it.
Bit.ly Links Clicked Over 3.4 Billion Times Monthly
If you had any doubt in your mind that popular online URL shortening service Bit.ly was somehow struggling, think again. New data released by the organization revealed Bit.ly links were clicked over 3.4 billion — yes, that’s billion — times in March. That’s about 700,000,000 up from the month prior, when 2.7 billion Bit.ly links were clicked.
The service has grown exponentially ever since Twitter made Bit.ly its default URL shortener, though it is estimated that only 40-50 percent of URLs shortened originate from Twitter. One hundred million clicks last month came from Facebook, in fact.
Is Twitter Launching Its Own URL Shortener?
San Francisco, California-based Twitter could soon be launching its very own URL shortener. You see, the company has acquired the twee.tt domain name, which is not yet live. The .tt is is the official country code top-level domain [ccTLD] for Trinidad and Tobago. Now, Twitter could also just be taking a preventive measure here, and just insuring that no one will use the aforementioned domain name.
Just this past Friday, Twitter announced its acquisition of Twitter-client Tweetie. The company plans to make the application its own, and distribute it for free. This has put many third-party developers in fear, given that they will be competing directly with the company that they are developing for.
Bit.ly Pro Self-Service Site Launches This Week
Originally announced in mid-December, Bit.ly‘s Professional self-service website is slated for an official launch later this week, according to an email sent out this evening by the URL-shortening service. The launch was pushed back a couple of days as a result of Bit.ly deciding to incorporate “new features recommended by [their] beta-testers.” Additionally, the service is conducting a final round of quality assurance before official launch.
Bit.ly pro will allow certain organizations (limited to large corporations/blogs at the moment) to create their own URL-shortening service using a customer domain name. A great example would be etric.com/<content> as opposed to using erictric.com/<content>.
The shortening of URLs has become massively popular since Twitter has become a new fad, as a result of the service limiting updates to 140 characters.
Bit.ly Bites Back At Goo.gl And Fb.me With Bit.ly Pro
Yesterday, we talked quite a bit about URL shorteners. We first reported that Google had launched Goo.gl, and later Facebook with fb.me. The big question was: What happens with Bit.ly? After all, Bit.ly is the default shortening service for Twitter, and if Google made its way around the block — that would surely not be good news.
But later in the evening, Bit.ly whipped out the big guns and announced Bit.ly Pro — a service which will allow publishers to create short URLs utilizing a shorter version of their domain names using the Bit.ly platform. Genius!
Additionally, it was also announced that Bit.ly Pro would implement “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.”
Both the custom URL service and dashboard are currently free beta programs, according to Bit.ly.
Facebook Has Also Launched Its Own URL Shortener
A few moments ago, we reported that Google had officially announced the launch of its very own URL shortener. It appears that Facebook has also launched its own URL shortener dubbed FB.me. Though, it’s not clear when exactly Facebook’s URL shortener was launched, it seems to be showing up quite a lot on Twitter and Mobile links.
Unlike other URL shorteners, Facebook automatically shortens links when shared on a mobile device. The stand-alone version seems to have been released to limited number of users. Though anyone on Facebook can shorten the links to their profiles by replacing Facebook.com with FB.me and adding the username at the end. For example, instead of using Facebook.com/erictric, we could just shorten it to fb.me/erictric [become a fan on Facebook!].
We believe that now that Google and Facebook, which are two of the most popular websites in the world, have launched their own URL shorteners, Bit.ly could be threatened. Bit.ly is currently the default URL shortener on Twitter.
Bit.ly Goes After Spammers And Malware With New Security Services
Bit.ly, the URL shortener of choice on Twitter, announced today on a blog post that in an additional effort to help combat spam and other malware masked in its short links, it will be working with three new security services.
The new security partners are:
The three services join the current efforts from bit.ly to warn users when it suspects a link will take them to a contaminated website. Also, bit.ly offers a downloadable plugin that previews websites.
