Posts Tagged ‘bit.ly’
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.
Bit.ly Gets Blocked By Panera Bread
Panera Bread, a national bakery/cafe chain is taking a stance to “keep a friendly-family environment for all [we think they meant family-friendly, but who's judging].” The chain is officially blocking all shortened/masked Bit.ly links to protect their visitors.
Bit.ly isn’t the only service being blocked, however. Panera Bread also seems to be blocking other URL shortening services.
Perhaps an important fact to mention is that Bit.ly does warn of malicious sites prior to a visitor clicking on a link, which surely has made some customers unhappier about the block. Look on the bright side though; if you don’t like it — don’t go to Panera Bread. If enough people complain, the company is sure to get the message.
Bit.ly Introduces J.mp For Even Shorter URLs
What happens when Twitter and its default URL shortener, Bit.ly, reproduce? You get a baby URL shortener that saves you two characters. Bit.ly has now launched a new URL shortening service called J.mp. That’s right, another URL shortening service to add to the cloud. In this case, it might be super important for Twitter-addicts. Two characters have never been so important in history until Twitter came along.
Users will find that the interfaces are nearly identical between Bit.ly and J.mp. As a matter of fact, you can log into J.mp with your Bit.ly username and password if you’re registered.
By the way, did you know Erictric has our very own URL Shortening service? It’s called Urlme.me. What do you think, should we give our URL shortening service away in a contest?
Bit.Ly Protecting You From Malicious Links
Bit.ly, perhaps one of the more popular URL shortening services out there is taking it a step further to protect you from malicious links (you know, the ones that take you to ridiculous ad-infested pages).
When a malicious link is detected (it is pulling information from Stopbadware.org and antiphishing.org), the user will be taken to a warning page. From this point, you can either close the window, or report the malicious link back to the sender.
We here at Erictric are also working on our very own URL shortener, but we’ll be focusing on simplicity. We’ll be making an announcement on this in the next few days.
[ source: TechCrunch ]