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
