Bit.Ly’s New Video Content Aggregation Site and Now Even Shorter URL’s
Bitly.tv
Bit.ly is a popular URL shortener and tracking service used by many of us advertisers and they just came out with some notable changes. The first is that Bit.ly Labs has created Bitly.tv which is a service that aggregates the most popular YouTube videos that people have shared and displays it on a simplified platform. There are also options to sort by “What the world is whatching” for now, last day, and last two days which gives an interesting insight into popular trends or rising searches.
With the vast advertising capabilities of Google AdWords to display ads upon YouTube Channels or even in-video ads, you could look towards this tool to find popular angles or insights into rising search trends to target.
Bit.ly Labs URL Shortener and Tracking Service
Most of us bloggers and tweeters have utilized Bit.ly, TinyURL, or other URL shortening services in order to make use of a link when there is just a short amount of characters allowed in a post or tweet. What Bit.ly has done is taken URL shortening to the next level by reducing the amount of characters needed for a “shorter” URL, by two characters less. The experiment started with the launch of j.mp , instead of the normal five character long bit.ly URL.
Bit.ly is expecting that the two character reduction will appeal to some users, especially as it’s ever so hard to fit authoritative content into 140 characters or less.
Launch of Bit.ly Pro
In relation to all of these announcements, Biy.ly has recently also launched Bit.ly Pro. Bit.ly Pro is a service that allows you to make custom short URL’s. A real life example of a custom short URL would be the New York Time’s short URL of “nyti.ms”.
This program which is still in beta is only available to a limited number of large and medium sized Web Publishers and bloggers, but is expected to be available to more companies soon. Users and publishers strongly benefit from the additional transparency that this private-label service provides. By observing the short URL as a consumer, you already know the destination web site before clicking on the link.
Bit.ly is also excited to introduce a unique real-time dashboard that provides publishers with even more information about their bit.ly traffic. Essentially it’s a real-time view of how a given publisher’s content is being distributed across networks like Twitter, Facebook, and MySpace services like email, SMS, and instant messenger.
In summary, Bit.ly has come out with some great new features that can really benefit you with your marketing efforts and tracking it all along the way.
By Jerrold Burke
Paid Search Analyst
Sources:
http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/12/17/bitly-offers-a-new-tv-service-and-a-shorter-url/http://bitly.tv/
http://blog.bit.ly/post/284009728/announcing-bit-ly-pro
