May 2013
6 posts
7 tags
Meet our breakfast panelist, Hide Harashima of...
If you’re an NYC resident, you know Dumbo. The Brooklyn neighborhood, an acronym for Down Under the Manhattan Bridge Overpass, is well-known for its rich history, booming real estate and a surplus of shops and restaurants. If you’re interested in finding out what’s going on in Dumbo, you read DumboNYC, a hyperlocal blog that highlights all this plus the interesting people who live and work in...
6 tags
Syracuse University students visit bitly
We were thrilled to have 16 students from Syracuse University visit us at bitly HQ on Thursday. Their visit was planned as part of SU’s EntreTech NYC course, a class designed to to expose students to information-based companies and entrepreneurs in New York City.
Bitly employees from all different roles took the time to speak with the EntreTech NYC students, showcasing the range of...
3 tags
Meet our breakfast panelist, Dave Gustav of Bowery...
Five years ago, Dave Gustav would have never guessed that he would be the co-founder of Bowery Boogie, a hyperlocal entertainment, lifestyle, and local news site that is focused primarily on the Lower East Side neighborhood in Manhattan. Since then, he’s helped the blog grow from a simple Blogger site to the largest site dedicated to news and lifestyle of the neighborhood. Along the way he’s been...
8 tags
Meet our breakfast panelist, Jamila Rowser of Girl...
Jamila Rowser is pretty unique in the blogging world - she’s a comic-book-lover, anime enthusiast and self-proclaimed geek. Jamila is the one-woman army behind Girl Gone Geek, her blog where she talks about what she’s “obsessed with in the geek realm.” That can range from sci-fi and fantasy to anime to video games, and everything in-between.
Jamila’s one of the panelists for our upcoming bitly...
5 tags
Improvements to tracking your links with bitly
Over the past few months we have been working on some exciting improvements to the way we show link stats. Your feedback inspired these improvements, and members of the bitly community beta tested them. We are excited to share them with you today.
The improved link stats view — which you can access by adding a “+” to any bitly link or by clicking “view stats” on any link in your history...
5 tags
Join us for breakfast on Friday, May 31st!
Come join us at bitly HQ in NYC on Friday, May 31st for a free breakfast and panel discussion on what your blog can do for you. We are thrilled to feature Jamila Rowser of Girl Gone Geek, Dave Gustav of Bowery Boogie, Hide Harashima of DumboNYC, and Brandon Gorrell of Thought Catalog on our morning panel.
We will discuss a variety of topics, like how to get involved in blogging, how to build an...
April 2013
3 posts
12 tags
Meet Matt LeMay; foodie, musician and Head of...
You know what bitly does, but do you know who bitly is?
We’re excited to start a new series highlighting different members of the bitly team. Each month, we’ll feature a different bitly employee and talk about their role here at bitly, as well as their outside interests, projects and goals.
Up first is Matt LeMay, bitly’s Head of Consumer Product. He’s known here for his role as part of the...
11 tags
Astronaut Ron Garan visits bitly!
NASA Astronaut Ron Garan stopped by the bitly HQ on Friday while in NYC for the International Space Apps Challenge, a two-day hackathon where citizens from seven continents, 44 countries and 83 cities came together with the aim of making the world a better place.
Ron’s well-known not only for his work at the International Space Station (he’s traveled there twice, first in 2008 for a two-week...
5 tags
Keep track of your links by adding notes
We’re often asked how users can best keep track of all the links they save. There are several different ways to organize your bitly links, bundles being one of them. But we’re also big fans of using notes to help you sort links quickly and easily.
The search tool makes it simple to find links based on link title and keywords. But sometimes you have many links with similar titles, or hundreds of...
March 2013
5 posts
8 tags
How People Use Social Networks Around The World
It’s easy to forget what the world looks like from outside your own country, and it can often look quite different. At bitly, we’re reminded of this every day: we see traffic from over 220 countries, with the US accounting for roughly a third of the total. In this country, most of the social sharing happens on facebook and twitter, but what about in the rest of the world?
We answered this...
2 tags
Getting Started with the Bitly API
At bitly, we’re constantly working to make our platform as developer friendly as possible. So we’re happy to share this quickstart guide that contains sample code for several of our popular API endpoints that power the millions of link shortens, clicks and shares we see every day, per day. Written as a side project by our resident Enstitute fellow and data newbie Jasmine, these simple python...
Announcement
Bitly is announcing today that Peter Stern has resigned to pursue other interests.
“Peter has been a key leader and contributor to the Company,” said Bitly Board member Sam Mandel. “In particular he has been instrumental in transforming Bitly into a successful business while growing its unparalleled data set. We are very happy that he will remain a shareholder and supporter.”
3 tags
Welcome to bitly: Billions and Billions Served
The Web does not just connect machines, it connects people.” - Sir Tim Berners-Lee
Since January 2011 we’ve seen nearly 100 billion human clicks on bitly-powered links. Whether it’s the fascination with the russian meteor, Rand Paul’s filibuster, or the cutest of kittens, the social web surprises and gratifies us daily. We’re grateful for the trust and the opportunity to discover and learn...
4 tags
Connect your iPhone contacts to the bitly app!
As we’ve mentioned in the past, the bitly iPhone app is a great way to access all of your favorite links when away from your desktop, and a great way to share your links via Facebook and Twitter. But did you know you can also connect your iPhone contacts list to the app, making it the ultimate tool for sharing your favorite links with others? You will be able to seamlessly email or text message...
February 2013
3 posts
1 tag
Sharing an Oscar Nominee Story
The Academy Awards are the final event in the season of awards ceremonies. With the glamour of Hollywood’s hottest in their finest designer gowns, many of us at home can’t help but watch the entire show. We took this opportunity to use bitly data to see which nominees from specific categories saw the most attention online in the weeks prior to the ceremony. The most interesting thing we...
2 tags
Introducing link insights!
Have you ever wanted to know more about the life of the links you save on bitly? For example, are you the first person to save this link? Was the link popular in the past? Is anyone else clicking this link right now? You can now learn more about the “life” of any link you save, with key insights about the link that are displayed the second you save it. Key insights include being the first to save...
3 tags
Three ways to engage your community
Last week, we hosted our first bitly breakfast at bitly HQ. We brought together community managers and digital strategists for an early morning discussion on how to build community. Dave Brown from MKG, Meghan Peters from Mashable, and Emily Miethner from NY Creative Interns were invited as panelists and provided a great discussion with helpful advice. Here are a few ideas that emerged from the...
January 2013
6 posts
bitly for Community Managers and Digital...
Community managers and digital strategists are always looking for ways to do their job better. At bitly, we make it a little easier to organize and track all the stuff you share every day with the people you care about, so that you can better understand what is working and what is not. We make it easy for you to understand how, where and when your links are traveling across the web. Here are some...
The Guy Fieri review lives on: Watching a link’s...
Photo credit: Casey Kelbaugh for the NYTimes
At the end of 2012, we shared some of the most popular bitly links of the year from The New York Times in a bundle. With a little bitly science we discovered that the infamous restaurant review of Guy’s American Kitchen was the third most clicked link from The New York Times. Nate...
3 tags
Be unique with a custom short domain
We love our bitly links, but some people may find they’d like to add a bit more personality to their shortlinks. This is possible with a custom short domain, which takes the place of ‘bit.ly’ or ‘bitly.com’ in a shortened URL. If you were to use ‘myname.me’ as a custom domain, instead of appearing like this:
bitly.com/bOm096G
your links would appear like this:
myname.me/bOm096G
A custom short...
Introducing the new bitmarks list view!
Viewing click counts, grabbing the shortlink, and sorting your links from your bitmarks list just got a lot easier with today’s update. Thank you to the bitly community for sharing your feedback with us. We’ve made these updates with all of you in mind. Here is what you can now do:
• View clicks on your shortlink at a glance. Easily see how many clicks your shortlink received. Want to learn more...
Hack at bitly’s API with our new class on...
At bitly, we strongly believe in open APIs and want to make it as easy as possible for you to build awesome stuff. Today we’re excited to announce a partnership with Codecademy that will help newbie and expert developers alike use our API. Codecademy teaches the basics of programming and how to build great companies, products, and applications, and now has classes designed by the API experts...
Announcing the Bitly Social Data APIs
Dear developers and data lovers,
We’re incredibly excited to announce the public release of a new social data API! Every day millions of people shorten, share, and click on links via bitly’s services. This API gives you direct access to the best available content shared by people across all social networks. There are three kinds of functionality you can now access:
True Realtime Search
Run a...
December 2012
5 posts
2012 in the bitlyverse
2012 was a big year in the world of social media! We saw the emergence of new platforms and memes, and ways of thinking about the world.
bitly continued growing, with more than 8.4 billion links created, which means that if every link was a star we would have shortened ~4.2% of the Milky Way.
Continuing the cosmic trends, one of the top images was from NASA: the Mars Rover’s adorable...
Bundling your wish list for the holidays & beyond...
Tired of getting socks year after year? Need one place to keep your holiday shopping lists? Bundles make it easier for you to keep track of your holiday shopping and share your wish list with others. A bundle lets you save links on one page and share them all using one link. You can add comments, make the bundle private or public, and invite curators to the bundle if you’d like.
It’s never too...
Using bitly to gain insights and collaborate
We love seeing all the ways that our community is using bitly to gain insights and make their lives easier. Alisha Miranda is one of these people- a Digital Strategist, productivity hacker, and bitly enthusiast. This week, we asked Alisha a few questions about her work and bitly. Without further ado meet Alisha.
Tell us a little about yourself and the type of work you do.
I’m a Digital...
5 great ways to use the iPhone app
Over the past few months the bitly iPhone app has gained even more features to give you easy access to your bitmarks and bundles wherever you are. Whether you’re saving an article to read later, or quickly checking click counts on the bitmark you just shared, the iPhone app is the perfect tool for a bitly user on the go. Still not convinced? Here are five things that you may not have known about...
Watching your audience click
Ever wonder how many people are reading the stuff you share on Twitter and Facebook? With bitly you can discover how many people clicked on your links, and where the traffic comes from. It’s one interesting way to understand the success of the links you’re sharing. Just take a bitly link, add a + to the end, and enter it into your browser to land on the info page.
On the info page you’ll see...
November 2012
3 posts
Shorten your links faster!
Want to quickly grab a shortlink? Our recently revamped logged out shorten page makes it easier for you to do exactly that. Just go to bitly.com/shorten, and paste a long URL into the shorten box. You’ll see the aggregate click count (total clicks generated by anyone who shared that same URL using bitly) along with a preview of the link. You’ll also see how many people saved the same URL using...
Understanding your bitly stats page
How many of your followers have read the latest article you shared on Twitter or Facebook? Did the people on your mailing list open the link include in your latest email newsletter? Are you ever curious where the people who clicked on your link are located? The stats page answers all these questions for you. When you sign up for a bitly account, you gain access to a stats page. In addition to...
Halflife by Topic
At bitly we extract the topic of each page whose URL gets shortened using our service. We decided to see how the topic of the page affects how quickly the page gets consumed after publication. To measure the speed of consumption, we use a metric we call the ‘halflife’ of the page.
‘Halflife’ We find the ‘halflife’ of a link by calculating the time from the first click on a link to the median...
October 2012
2 posts
Using bundles to communicate within your...
A few weeks ago we spotted some awesome bundles created by Huge, a digital agency based in Brooklyn. Each week they create a bundle with five links to interesting articles. The bundle is shared internally with the entire agency and then posted on their social media accounts. We loved this idea and talked to their Communications team to learn more about Huge and how they use bitly.
The Huge...
Sharing your upcoming events using bundles
Bundles are particularly helpful when you find yourself wanting to share a bunch of links at the same time. Bundles let you organize your links, add comments, curate with your friends, and share it all using one link.
There are many ways bundles can be used (trip planning, resource sharing, recipe collecting). Bundles also help you organize and share all the events happening in your community....
September 2012
5 posts
Introducing bundles on the iPhone app!
Today we’re excited to share an updated bitly iPhone app (download here) that now includes bundles. This is a big update that will let you do even more with your links while on the go.
Bundles help you organize the links you save around a theme. Travel tips, recipes, research on a topic- anything! They’re also handy for collaborating with others- brainstorming with coworkers, dinner party...
Save and share links right from your browser
Looking to easily save and share all the stuff you find across the web? bitly’s Chrome extension will help you do exactly that. Any link can be quickly saved and shared right from your browser. Don’t use Chrome? Check out our handy bitmarklet.
We’ve made some updates to the bitly Chrome extension that make it faster and easier for you to save and share all the links you find across the web....
Public and Private – What’s the difference?
Every time you save a link or create a bundle with bitly, you can decide whether it’s public or private. Those can be loaded terms when it comes to the Internet, so we thought we’d explain exactly what “public” and “private” mean on bitly. Public bitmarks and bundles will be displayed on your public profile page, and may appear in your friends’ Network...
bitly tricks! ‘shift+i’ in your bitmarks list
(image by Gregory Hansen)
Want to see all your bitly stats at a glance? You can quickly do this with the handy keyboard shortcut ‘shift+i’ while in your bitmarks list. It will immediately open all the info panels for bitmarks on that page, revealing click counts, share history, and a shortlink to copy. You can also see this information for a specific bitmark by clicking the “i” button in your...
Organize and share your reading list
(Photo via Apartment Therapy)
Sometimes there can be an overwhelming amount of stuff you’d like to read or want to recommend to others. Those books you can’t put down. The articles that make you laugh. The links you find that educate you on a topic you knew little about before and know someone else will learn from. How do you organize and share all these links using bitly?
Professor Sree...
August 2012
10 posts
Sharing your expertise with bundles
Photographer: Eric Vance, EPA Chief Photographer
It’s flattering to be deemed an expert on a topic or activity you love. A savvy traveler on a shoestring, an animated gif connoisseur, or someone who knows the best places to track storms. Whatever your expertise may be you’re bound to be asked for advice often. You might have many resources from across the web that you want to share, but how do...
Your favorite recipes wherever you are
You’re at the supermarket and can’t remember the ingredients for the dish you plan to make. You’re at your computer and can’t find the recipe you saw last week. You’re in the kitchen and can’t recall the secret ingredient. You need a way to organize and rediscover all those recipes you want to make. You need bitly.
Save all those tasty recipes you find in one place
Download the Chrome...
Your bitmarks list and all it can do!
One great thing about the internet is how much new stuff there is to see every day. From delicious dinner recipes to published journal research, all this stuff is at our fingertips at any given moment. But sometimes this information can be overwhelming, and it becomes difficult to find what you’re looking for when you need it. Wouldn’t it be great to find all your favorite links across the web in...
Easily Save and Share the Links You Love
Ever find a link on the web that you’d like to save for later or share with someone else? An article on the election? A tasty recipe for Labor Day festivities? A hilarious video on YouTube? bitly makes it easy to save all the awesome stuff you discover, and share it with the people you care about. We call these saved links bitmarks.
We’ve continued to improve our save and share flow based on...
Let's Get Ready to bundle!
Have you ever had this problem…
You find a handful of delicious recipes across the web and want one place to save and find them later?
You’re brainstorming with your coworkers and wish you had a way for everyone to share and organize resources together in one place?
You’re a savvy traveler and have tips for a friend’s next big trip, but don’t know the easiest way to share them?
Here’s...
3 tags
The Summer Olympics Will Live On in Animated Gifs!...
The 2012 Summer Olympics are coming to a close this weekend. Two weeks of the best athletes on earth competing for the ultimate spot on the Olympic podium has resulted in many tears, a little bit of blood, and a lot of animated gifs. We used the science behind our most recent bitly labs project, http://rt.ly, to compile a bundle of the most popular Olympics related animated gifs saved with bitly...
Featured Bundle Curator: Artist, Joan Hiller
Joan’s bundle: http://bitly.com/P33cHD
Looking to revamp your home this August in anticipation of winter hibernation? Never too early to get inspired and start re-organizing. And Joan Hiller is here to help. Joan is a painter and music publicist who also knows a thing or two about interior design.
Joan in her former apartment in Portland. Featured in Apartment Therapy.
bitly bundles...
Ahoy! Celebrate August with bundling & a bitly...
Summer is flying on by, and we’d like to hear how you plan on enjoying the last full month of the season in a bitly bundle created by you. Bundles let you organize many links around a theme or idea all on one easy to share page. What recipes will you be whipping up? Where will you be traveling? What activities will you be doing? Let’s see what a slice of your August looks like through a bitly...
The Most Popular Athletes at the London Olympics
For most sports, winning Olympic gold is the greatest achievement possible. Olympic athletes are under intense pressure. Not only are they representing the hopes and dreams of their country, but they also are keenly aware that this might be their only chance at being a champion. Professional sports award a championship each year, the Olympics crowns a champion every four.
During the Olympics, an...
Featured bundle Curator: Veronica Belmont
Veronica’s curated bundle: http://bitly.com/MUvmiK
Veronica Belmont is a technology and gaming video host who is also behind the popular sci-fi and fantasy community site, Sword and Laser. Along with Tom Merritt, Veronica creates weekly podcasts and shares book reviews that cover everything from Game of Thrones to Star Trek.
Veronica is always on the lookout for new and interesting stuff to...
July 2012
5 posts
from bitly labs: say hello to realtime
We’re extremely proud to share realtime as our latest bitly labs project.
bitly labs is a space for us to showcase experimental applications and product ideas. You can expect frequent updates, changes, and entirely new things to appear under this label.
Realtime is an attention ranking engine, offering the power to navigate through the stories that the world is paying attention to right now.
...
6 Reasons Why You Should Sign Up for a bitly...
We’ve released additional features with the new bitly, and the best way to take advantage is by signing up with your own free account. Why create an account? Here are some key benefits:
1. The Chrome Extension and Bitmarklet make saving and sharing easy
Bitmarks are the interesting links you collect across the web. With a bitly account you can start using the Chrome extension or Bitmarklet, two...
