bitly blog

new CEO

bitly was started @betaworks almost three years ago, and in that time it has grown from a project into a business.   The site is a big site, the API is one of the largest on the web, there are thousands of white label partners using bitly, billions of links created, and billions of clicks on those links every month.     About 8 weeks ago we announced the arrival of MRoth from Flickr, now we are announcing Peter Stern’s arrival as CEO. As bitly is entering a new stage in its development I could not be more excited to pass the baton to Peter.

bitly Hires Peter Stern as CEO | AllThingsD http://bit.ly/irfxt8

News.me is available now!

We are very excited to announce that News.me - a new social news reader for the iPad powered by bitly - is now available in the iTunes app store. You can read more about News.me on bitly CEO John Borthwick’s blog here, and you can download the app directly from the iTunes store here. If you do not have an iPad, you can sign up for a daily, personalized bitly-powered email news digest at the News.me website.

bitly’s Got a Brand New Mobile Site!

Hey look, it’s a desk covered in mobile devices!

What makes these mobile devices different from all other mobile devices? They are all running the brand new cross-platform bitly mobile site, which we are extremely stoked to share with you today. Just pick up your favorite (smart)phone or tablet, navigate over to bit.ly, j.mp or bitly.com, and behold the newness.

What can you do on the bitly mobile site? Broadly speaking, you can shorten, share and track links just as you can with the full bitly web experience. We’ve also cooked in some nifty mobile-specific features:

• If you try to shorten a link while your device is not connected to the Internet, that link will automatically be saved for later and shortened when your connection is restored.

• Hold down on any link in your bitly history to open that link, open it in a new window, or copy the short URL to your clipboard.

• Pull down on the screen to refresh your bitly history instantly.

• As you browse through your history, up to 100 recent links are cached on your phone, so you can access your bitly links even if you aren’t connected to the Internet.

• Set up bitly as a homescreen web clip on your iPhone.

• Preview the contents of any bitly link, including video hosted on major sites such as Vimeo and YouTube.

• Get detailed ‘n’ pretty analytics for any bitly link, rendered for your enjoyment using HTML5 magics.

• Immediately access a QR code for any bitly link.

• Pull down the screen to refresh click counts and analytics instantly.

Go forth and shorten!

In Which We Welcome Matthew Rothenberg to the bitly Team

The last couple months have been exceptionally busy for us here at bitly. We’ve been rolling out a bunch of new features, and we have a ton more new stuff in the pipeline. (We’ll be showcasing some of the new awesomeness on this very blog.) We are buzzing with small improvements and big ideas, and we look forward to providing you with even more ways to create, share and explore bitly links and data.

Recently, esteemed social technologist and fellow doughnut enthusiast Matthew Rothenberg blogged that he was moving on from Flickr, and we are extremely pleased and proud to announce that Matthew will be moving to New York and joining our team as VP of Product. Matthew shares our belief that technology should make your life easier and your world more interesting, and his vision helped build Flickr into one of the most robust, social and downright lovable platforms on the web. We could not be more excited to have him on board.

Here’s to the future!

Network Issues Affecting Some Comcast Customers

We are receiving reports that a small number of Comcast customers have been experiencing general Internet connectivity problems. We continue to see normal levels of traffic at bit.ly, and our systems continue to function normally. You can always stay up to date on the status of our service by visiting our public status page at http://status.bit.ly. We will keep you posted as we hear more about this issue.

UPDATE: Comcast has acknowledged this issue and is working to resolve it.

UPDATE: This issue appears to be resolved.

Jimmy Fallon Introduces Rap Crew Odd Future with a bitly QR Code

As reported by Mashable, Jimmy Fallon introduced rap crew Odd Future’s epic Wednesday night performance with an LP-sized QR code in hand. Odd Future’s record label XL Recordings used bitly’s automatic QR code generation to set up this code, which redirects to Odd Future’s website when scanned by a mobile device.

As always, you can track any bit.ly link by appending a + sign to the short URL; if you’re curious just how many people held their cameraphones up to their TVs, you can find detailed analytics about this link at http://bit.ly/foTEf3+

QR Codes are now included on the info page for every bit.ly link, and can also be generated by appending .qrcode to any bitly link — for example, the QR Code used by Fallon can be generated automatically by navigating to http://bit.ly/foTEf3.qrcode

The hack.a.bit Hackathon Goes Bicoastal for Groundhacks Day, Wednesday 2.2.11

We have teamed up with our friends at Klout to host the first bicoastal hack.a.bit hackathon on Wednesday, February 2nd at 6pm ET/3pm PT, aka Groundhacks Day!

The event will take place at both bit.ly HQ in New York (the site of all previous hack.a.bit hackathons) and Klout’s fabulous new space in San Francisco, and we will be converging on the interwebs via Skype and the hackabit party chat.

We’ll have engineers on hand to answer any questions you may have about the bit.ly and Klout APIs but, as always, you are free to hack away on whatever project(s) you’d like. There will be code, there will be pizza, there will be caffeinated beverages, and hackerly good will shall radiate from coast to coast. We hope to see you there!

Click here to register for the Groundhacks Day East (New York), and click here to register for Groundhacks Day West (San Francisco).

Stop! Collaborate and Bundle.

Happy holidays from bit.ly! As you may have noticed, we’re celebrating the season with some some festive winter decorations.

We are also celebrating the tens of thousands of bit.ly bundles that our users have created since we launched this feature one month ago today. The Guardian made a bundle of worldwide Wikileaks coverage, NASA made a bundle of Falcon 9 Rocket photos, ThinkGeek made a bundle of geeky snowflake patterns, and the Seattle Times made a bundle of La Niña information — then linked to it in their print edition with a bit.ly QR Code!

True to the spirit of giving, you can now invite your friends and co-conspirators to collaborate with you!

Just click the “Collaborate” button in the right-hand sidebar of a bit.ly bundle. You can then enter the e-mail address or bit.ly username of the person with whom you wish to collaborate.

If you entered a bit.ly username (or an e-mail address associated with a registered bit.ly user), that person will automatically be granted access to your bundle. If you entered an e-mail address that does not belong to a registered bit.ly user, an invitation will be sent via e-mail.

To make sure your bundle stays fresh and up-to-date, you will receive an on-screen notification whenever one of your collaborators modifies a bundle you are currently viewing. And, because anything less than the best is a felony, you can now set your bundle to “private” until you are ready to share it with the world.

So, enjoy the season, bundle up, and watch out for the ice.

Word to your mother.

Announcing The Winners Of The bit.ly API Contest!

…. aaaand so ends the second bit.ly API Contest! Once again, we were floored by the range and depth of the submissions we received. Thanks to everyone who submitted, and special thanks to everyone who came to one of our hackabit hackathons and/or gave us feedback about our API. Without further ado….

1st Prize (MakerBot Thing-O-Matic 3D Printer):
* bit.ly news (http://bit.ly/fvM96H) - A Hacker News-style display of trending bit.ly links.

This project surfaces trending bit.ly links from Twitter and orders them by click count. Much like our own bitly.tv, this makes it easy to see what’s popular in the bit.ly universe!

2nd Prize (1TB USB hard drive in vintage Nintendo game enclosure):
* bit.ly File Storage (http://bit.ly/hx2kAc) - A hack for storing data with bit.ly.

We were especially impressed by the use of a binary tree for data retrieval with a single bit.ly URL! While this is not necessarily a use of bit.ly that we would encourage, credit is due for cleverness and chutzpah.

* “Your Trending Twitter Topics” (http://bit.ly/h4zo5k) - A utility for analyzing which topics drive the most clicks for a given Twitter user’s bit.ly links.

This is a great way of examining the context around bit.ly links. Bonus points for checking against the encoding bit.ly user to filter out retweets.

* wpTwitBox Wordpress Plugin (http://bit.ly/gSyZrh) - A Wordpress plugin that can shorten links in incoming comments with bit.ly, and store bit.ly links to use as cached permalinks.

We love that this WP plugin allows you to automatically shorten links in incoming comments, and to do so with your own bit.ly username and API key.

3rd Prize (BuckyBalls magnetic desk toy):
* bit.ly Button (http://bit.ly/gs3BJa) - A jQuery plugin that shows the bit.ly click count for a given page.

* bitdb (http://bit.ly/gizhA0) - A key-value store built on bit.ly.

* “Shorten” for Symbian OS (http://bit.ly/enMS7w) - A bit.ly client for Symbian.

* FractalAtlas (http://bit.ly/h1bDOQ) - A visualization of bit.ly referrers.

* “bitlyminous: A Twitter Bot for Bitly” (http://bit.ly/ewrwYL) - A Twitter bot that tweets related bit.ly links.

Honorable Mentions:
* ta.gy (http://bit.ly/glXrmK) - A tool for plastering bit.ly links and QR codes all over town.

* bit.ly Webrings (http://bit.ly/hkjSCs) - A trip down memory lane that uses bit.ly click counts.

* HN+Influence (http://bit.ly/gCLIBB) - A Hacker News remix that accounts for bit.ly click counts and Backtweets data.

* A bit.ly-FourSquare mashup (http://bit.ly/fJ3ou4) - A tool that uses bit.ly QR Codes for FourSquare check-ins.

* “bit.ly IM” (http://bit.ly/eMjoH1) - A jabber bot that shortens and expands bit.ly links.

* bit.ly Salesforce Widget (http://bit.ly/eTklVo) - A widget for quickly creating bit.ly links within the Salesforce CRM.

* bit.ly for YQL (http://bit.ly/ecEFxz) - Tables for using the bit.ly API with Yahoo!’s unified query language.

As always, feel free to contact us at api@bit.ly if you have any questions or comments about using the bit.ly API!

Meet The Bundles!

Since we launched bit.ly Bundles on Monday evening, our users have created over 14,000 bundles of bit.ly links! We’ve seen bundles of recipes, bundles of Complexity Dilberts, bundles of news, bundles of design, bundles of music, bundles of photos, bundles of fonts, bundles of domain name registrars, bundles of BBC, bundles of bundles, and bundles more. We’ll be sharing some of our favorite at @bitlybundles - let us know if you have a bundle to show off!

To make bundling even easier, you can now bundle links from anywhere on the web with our bit.ly Sidebar bookmarklet. Just drag this bit.ly Sidebar link to your browser’s bookmark bar (1), then click it while you’re on any page you’d like to bundle.

At the bottom of the sidebar, you will find a list of your 10 most recently shortened links (2), including your current location. Just select the links you’d like to bundle, hit the “Bundle” button, and voila! The links you have selected can now be reordered, annotated, and shared with a single bit.ly short URL.

If you’d like to add your own spin to another user’s bit.ly bundle, you can easily recreate and remix that bundle using the “Clone Bundle” button:

Once you’ve cloned a bundle, you can reorder and modify it however you’d like — you can even include a link to the original bundle to show where you got started. Happy bundling!