Guess what, most of you should be quite familiar with url shortening sites , especially with the boom of Twitter . By no means a new things, the currently most frequently used site TinyURL.com is already in the market as early as year in 2002. Read more on Biz Seeker !
As we do know of, there has been much competitions coming out in recent years, amid the rapid development on micro blogging site like Twitter . One of the big challenger seems to be Bit.ly , which was established in year 2008. Further, with the growing popularity of mobile connectivity, new application such as ‘bit.lify‘ , has been developed to suit BlackBerry’s users . After installing this free application, BlackBerry users can then able to visit and utilize Bit.ly function to complete the url shortening features, which comes handy when including the url into their emails or so.
Another player in the same field is offered by ‘ TweaK URL shortening service’ . It is operated by Dot TK, the .tk (Tokelau) domain registry. What’s unique is that TweaK URL service is from a domain registry, and thus the output is indeed a second-level domain, and can be as short as just 5 characters , example would be http://ah19p.tk !
According to the official from tweak.tk, the service uses true 301 redirect, so SE would follow the link to your actual content. This is indeed a plus point, especially for webmasters.
Nevertheless, despite these rapid development and high popularity, the url shortening module is currently seems as still lacking behind in term of operating it as a Business Model. At current stage, these type of sites are still free to use by large, as clearly there has not been source of incomes suitable for it. At the time of positing, TinyURL uses Google Adsense on its site, while Bit.ly has not display any advertising as yet.
As of early May 2009, it is reported that Bit.ly attracts a whopping 50 million traffic, which is double comparing to preceding month. One of the technology used behind Bit.ly is on its realtime tracking and users online behavior analysts ability, and then extracting these information to chart out what’s hot or latest online trends.
Currently, the idea behind it seems to be more on data collection and analysts. It is still unclear as to how Bit.ly going to utilize and turn these into Profitable Business Model and start generating revenue, which would then help sustain its continuous developments and further growth.
