The rapid growth of bit.ly as the most popular URL shortening service has been quite remarkable. Following Twitter’s switch from TinyURL to bit.ly, statistics from Tweetmeme show that bit.ly now represents 46 percent of all short URLs on Twitter within the past 24 hours, while TinyURL’s share has decreased to 43 percent. Just over a month ago, TinyURL held a dominant 75 percent share, compared to bit.ly’s 13 percent. However, bit.ly managed to overtake TinyURL in the past night.
The surge in popularity of URL shortening services is closely tied to the rise of Twitter and its 140-character limit. Services like Bit.ly and TinyURL provide shortened links that are more suitable for Twitter and redirect users to the original pages. Standardizing on a single URL shortening service can assist Twitter in gathering data about the linked pages, which aligns with its plans for indexing these links as part of its search and analytical efforts.
Bit.ly originated from Betaworks, which also had an investment in Summize, the startup that was acquired by Twitter to establish its real-time search engine.
The valuation of bit.ly would undoubtedly be intriguing to consider at this point.
(Hat tip to Jenna Wortham).
