Bit.ly,
the smart URL shortener from Betaworks
, keeps getting new features. Will it start making money, soon, too?
Betaworks CEO John Borthwick tells us that Bit.ly's first revenue generator could be coming soon: A premium set of tools for Web publishers who want to use Bit.ly to shorten URLs on a regular basis, including some sort of dashboard with more stats and custom branding. What's that mean? Instead of Tweeting out a link like
bit.ly/1NBDp8
on Twitter, we could potentially use something like
alleyinsider.com/1NBDp8
. What would that be worth to us? Something, we think. But not a lot. So Bit.ly would need to sign up a lot of us to make it worthwhile.
Meanwhile, Bit.ly has a handy update to its service: A new "bookmarklet" for Firefox that lets you shorten URLs without leaving the page.
Borthwick explains
:
#1. Go to
bit.ly
and drag the link circled below into you browser toolbar.
#2. When you are on a page, click the bit.ly link in your browser and automagically a tile comes up that shortens the URL, lets you send it to someone (email or twitter) and see information or conversations about that page.
#3. There is no third step. See the screen shot below of a post on AVC ? with bit.ly showing information about where Fred’s post got shared and how often.
See Also:
Betaworks Launches Bit.ly, A Smarter TinyURL
Firefly's Chat-On-A-Webpage Goes Live
Twitter Buys Summize For About $15M: Gets Search - And Maybe A Business Model
