bit.ly now

We have had a lot going on at bit.ly over the past few weeks — some highlights — starting with some data.

• bit.ly is now encoding (creating) over 10m URL’s or links a week now — not too shabby for a company that was started last July.

• We picked the winners of the API contest last week after some excellent submissions

• Also last week the bit.ly team started to push out the new real time metrics system. This system offers the ability to watch in real time clicks to a particular bit.ly URL or link  The team are still tuning and adjusting the user experience but let me outline how it works.

If you take any bit.ly link and add a “+” to the end of the URL you get the Info Page for that link.  Once you are on the info page you can see the clicks to that particular link updated by week, by day or live — a real time stream of the data flow.

An example:

On the 15th of February a bit.ly user shortened a link to an article on The Consumerist about Facebook changing their terms of service.  The article was sent around a set of social networks and via email with the following link http://bit.ly/mDwWb.   It picked up velocity and two days later the bit.ly info page indicates that the link has been clicked on over 40,000 times — you can see the info page for this link below (or at http://bit.ly/mDwWb+ ).

In the screenshot below

1.) you see a thumbnail image of the page, its title, the source URL and the bit.ly URL.    You also see the total number of clicks to that page via bit.ly, the geographical distribution of those clicks, conversations about this link on Twitter, FriendFeed etc and the names of other bit.ly users who shortened the same link.

2.) you see the click data arrayed over time.:

The view selected in the screenshot above is for the past day — in the video below you can see the live data coming in while the social distribution of this page was peaking yesterday.

This exposes intentionality of sharing in its rawest form.   People are taking this page and re-distributing it to their friends.     The article from the Consumerist is also on Digg — 5800 people found this story interesting enough to Digg it.   Yet more than 40,000 people actually shared this story and drove a click through to the item they shared.     bit.ly is proving to be an interesting complement to the thumbs up.   We also pushed out a Twitter bot last week that publishes the most popular link on bit.ly each hour.    The content is pretty interesting.   Take a look and tell me what you think — twitter user name: bitlynow.

————–

A brief note re: Dave Winer’s post today on on bit.ly.

Dave is moving on from his day to day involvement with bit.ly — I want to thank him for his ideas, help and participation.     It was an amazing experience working with Dave.    Dave doesnt pull any punches — he requires you to think — his perspective is grounded in a deep appreciation for practice — the act of using products — understanding workflow and intuiting needs from that understanding.   I learnt a lot.     From bit.ly and from from me — thank you.

A pleasure and a privildege.