Goo.gl, Fb.me and Bit.ly? What do these ‘tech-jargons’ represent? Ladies and gentlemen in case you still haven’t notice how the URL as you know in the past are changing dramatically, then you probably don’t give a darn about this one. However, to the other class of people who are the life of the web, these jargons which is properly called “URL shorteners” are part of their daily lives, triple that need if we are talking about netrepreneurs who wants to keep track of their links as realtime as possible.
One of the most popular shortener around is “Bit.ly”, let’s just say this tool can do a lot of ‘miraculous jobs’ if we are just talking about URL shortening – You can choose your own URL name, customize your URL name really ‘loong’, Track how many clicks your URL received, has a very neat dashboard to show in what country does your visitors came from, Did I say fast redirection from the Bit.ly URL to your original URL too?
Bit.ly has been used by Twitterers to make their URL more appealing. Spammers also used Bit.ly for their own gain as well. To a hacker, its a dream come true to led a victim on their trap-website by having a very ‘attractive’ looking URL.
And now, guess what? All of a sudden! News are becoming rampant that ‘just’ because Google and Facebook released their own URL shortening tool (Goo.gl and Fb.me respectively) then suddenly it will became the ‘ Armageddon’ for Bit.ly? I admire the exaggeration, but another bloated-analysis indeed. Reasons? Goog only announced that their URL shorteners will be for their homegrown products only such as feedburner, google toolbar although they are not closing the doors for future wider experience hence could be the same services Bit.ly are currently providing. However, it still doesn’t mean there will be a total shift of Bit.ly users, to the Goo.gl shortener when that feature is released (Why? see the premise below) The same story goes for Facebook, currently the 3rd overall top ranking website (base from alexa) launched its shortening tool also, to cater its services for the facebook loving users.
Looking at the details, there will be no surprise if the quantity of people using Bit.ly be reduce, but a complete fallout just because two mogul website joins the fun is far from reality. Keep in mind that when Bit.ly started there are other URL shortening websites that provide the same services also (E.g TinyUrl) However, because of Bit.ly ‘wonderful’ features, it became their springboard towards the top, but it doesn’t mean TinyUrl was dead already, right? It just means that there’s competition involve and the other URL shorteners got served because the the latter (Bit.ly) provides greater features.
If you will look at Google’s statement they are promising, stability, security, speed (they always do) for their new goo.gl tool. Let me guess, you probably want to experience it first-hand now, would you? We too! But Bit.ly wouldn’t be so unwise not to notice the competition lurking in the background, they know their limitation (Lack of resources compare to BIG G) their advantage? Features! that the user will find very useful.
The ‘Bit.ly going Pro’ event that happened later this day, is just a proof that Bit.ly are really serious with their business and they are highly-aware of the competition. With bit.ly pro it will enable users to brand their own URL. for example for pinoytutorial website, we could request to have a URL (http://pin.oy/) so we can build our own brand of URLs. Keep in mind that the picture has a tail-word ‘Pro’ so there could be a future-cost to have this lineament. Either way, it sounds very promising. (We will keep you posted for that)
In the end, one will realize that its a win-win situation for us users. Seeing competition for the betterment of services didn’t fail to sound good everytime. As for the speculations for bit.ly to be in jeopardy? Baah, just play monopoly and see how competition makes the game even more interesting.
On the other hand, its nice to see how Google brings another service to the table, hopefully it won’t take too long for them to realize that there are other half of the users who are waiting for them to release something which is at par with Bit.ly’s cool features. Or perhaps even better! For history’s sake, they aren’t called BIG G for nothing…
Ayt mate?
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Tags: bit.ly advantage, bit.ly features, bit.ly pro, bit.ly vs fb.me, bitly pro, goo.gl disadvantage, goo.gl sucks, goo.gl vs bit.ly, goo.gl vs fb.me, google vs bitly
3.ly is the shortest that i’ve found. ugly as shit, but 2 characters less