bitly blog

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 self-portrait.

We were inspired by the creativity of this year’s most trafficked Kickstarter projects, New York Times stories, and technology trends on Wired, and mystified by the top Wikipedia article, Lunch (and you can enjoy more of the top Wikipedia links here).

The end of the world was on many minds this year, so in the spirit of end-of-year fun we were curious what keywords accompanied the term ‘apocalypse’ on the social web. It seems zombies and the Mayans were hot this year, with the nuclear apocalypse barely registering in our collective hive-mind.


The economic apocalypse got about as much attention as UFOs. This story drew a lot of attention to Florida, and gave credence to our completely rational fear of a zombie uprising. There was lots of interest in the science necessary to debunk apocalyptic concerns, but more than twice as much interest in preparing for the End.

And, not surprisingly, we like to laugh about it. Our favorite destinations for end-of-days giggles included someecards.com, Seeking a Friend for the End of the World, Happy Place, and Autocowrecks.

No end-of-year summary would be complete without the cutest kitten. Hugs!

And if you need a real adorable treat, enjoy the top bukk.it images and animated gifts.

The social web is a silly, absurd, serious, and wonderful thing, reflecting the attention and the interests of the world, and we hope that 2013 brings even more delight.

Happy New Year from all of us at bitly!

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 late to send out a wish list to your family or friends. Here’s how to get started:

1. Log into your bitly account. Don’t have one? Sign up here.

2. Download the Chrome extension or bitmarklet, so that you can easily save and bundle links via your browser. 

3. Click ‘add to bundle’ from the Chrome extension or bitmarklet to add links to your bundle. You can also create a bundle while logged in.

4. Write a description and comments if you want under each link.

5. Add curators to help you add links and comments to your bundle.

Have to pick up some last minute gifts at the store? Keep track of your list on the go with the bitly iPhone app. 

Check out the wish list bundle featured in this post here. We’d also love to see how you’re bundling. Share your bundle link in the comments below or tweet at @bitly. Happy holidays!

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 Content & PR Consultant based out of New York City. I run press campaigns around lifestyle, culture, and technology companies. I geek out over start-ups, digital media, good design, and I have a thing for travel.

What are a few of your favorite links or blogs? 

Every day I’m Tumblin’, which means I can’t get enough of TV fandom blogs on there. I also love IFTTT, the Netted newsletters, FiftyThree’s Paper site, anything by KinfolkMagazine, Tastespotting, and the list goes on.

How do you use bitly?

Personally, its been my link-shortener for years. Most recently, I’ve used bitly bundles to collect items on the web for my Christmas wish list, which I’ve then shared with my mom so she can get a better idea of what I want. It’s a continually updated list, so she can check the public bundle anytime she wants and can find the source of where to buy the gift. She actually called me this weekend saying she had the list pulled up on her iPhone as she was Christmas shopping - score!

I also just started using bitly bundles as part of content strategy for my clients. We create a group bundle, add ourselves as curators, then pool in interesting links from around the web - anything from photo slideshows, videos, news articles, to competitor press - to then share on our social networks if applicable. We also add in notes about why this link matters and if/when we should share with our social media audience. Every week we check the list to make sure each link has been responded to if needed. It’s pretty neat!

What are some ways that bundles have helped you collaborate with others?

I often work with people who may be tech-savvy but don’t have the time or energy to deal with curating the web for interesting content. I’m a big believer of reading the internet and finding tools to help you be more productive. So, with bitly it’s a super simple, quick process to teach others. Plus, it’s a way to exchange and manage content in one place. Bonus points to people like me who hate numbers - the analytics behind your links are straightforward and easy to understand. You can immediately see what links work, and which ones don’t.

What are some of your favorite productivity hacks?

Everything related to email and calendar management. I use IFTTT religiously. I also love Mail Merge and Boomerang for email stuff. Evernote has been my backup plan for a while now…

Anything else…

I recommend using bitly if you want to be a good internet user. No long URLs ever!

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Interested in stats? Get an overview here. Want to start using bundles for work or fun? Learn the basics here. We’d also love to hear how you use bitly. Reach out to us at community[at]bitly.com, or leave a comment below.

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 the iPhone app:

1. You can view your links anywhere
Once you sign into your bitly account on the app it will instantly sync all of your bitmarks and bundles, giving you easy access to your links even when you’re away from your computer.

2. Read articles later in reader mode
When you save a text heavy link like an article or blog post as a bitmark you will have the option to read the post straight from the app via reader mode. To access reader mode simply select a bitmark from your list and press the reading glasses icon on the top right side of the screen.

3. Save, share, or copy a shortlink easily
To save a link via the app, simply copy any URL to your clipboard while browsing your iPhone. The next time you open the bitly app it will immediately ask if you’d like to save this link as a bitmark.

To copy a shortlink, select the bitmark you’d like and press ‘i’ icon on the top of the page. You will see the option to copy your shortlink. You can share your shortlink on that same page via email, facebook or twitter by clicking the orange share icon on the top right corner of the screen.

4. See click counts straight from your bitmark list
You can now see click counts for your links directly from bitmarks list, giving you the chance to check your stats in seconds while out and about.

5. Add bitmarks to bundles
The iPhone app gives you access to all the bundles you’ve created yourself or curated with others. You can also create new bundles or add bitmarks to existing bundles.

Ready to get started? You can download the iPhone app here. We’d be happy to answer any questions you may have-  just leave a comment below or reach out to @bitly on twitter.

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 the global stats of a link, which is the aggregate click count- all the clicks generated by everyone who shared that specific URL. If you shared the link from your own bitly account, you’ll also be able to see stats specific to the link you shared. When you land on an info page for any bitly link you can see all the clicks generated for that user’s version of the link (user hash) and all the clicks generated for all versions of the same URL (global hash) shortened using bitly. One reason to sign up for an account is to get a user hash for your bitly link. This allows you to see click counts for just your shortlink. The hash is what we call the string of characters and numbers in your bitly link.

One way to begin understanding the power of bitly’s analytics is to look at a popular link found “in the wild.” This past Sunday The New York Times ran a story about Maria Popova (@Brainpicker on Twitter) called, “She’s Got Some Big Ideas”. The article discusses her influence on Twitter and her ability to curate content that engages a varied audience of writers, scientists, artists, and technologists. When The New York Times asked how Popova views her job she responded with: “Helping people become interested in things they didn’t know they were interested in, until they are.” We think she does a pretty good job of that.

Popova uses bitly links on Twitter, and so do a lot of other Twitter users across the web (we shorten 80 million links per day). The New York Times article was originally shared by the Times, but then started to move across the web through other influencers and publishers. The graph in the above info page view shows click traffic over 24 hours, indicating an initial surge in shares and clicks, followed by a lull on Sunday night and a resurgence early Monday morning. 

Interested in seeing how your links are traveling and when in realtime? Find the info page for your own links by navigating to the stats page and clicking on a specific link, or simply add a + sign to the end of your shortlink and enter it into your browser. Have a question? Let us know. Tweet at @bitly, or shoot us an email to support@bitly.com.

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 bitly and the number of people who have shared it on Facebook or Twitter.

When you shorten using the logged out page we only store your latest 10 links, so if you’re interested in saving and storing more links you’ll want to sign up for a free bitly account. We’ll import your latest 10 links directly into your new account. When you’re logged in you get to see the specific number of clicks generated for your own bitly link. That means you can easily track how many people are reading the content you share. You can learn more about the advantages of signing up for a bitly account here. 

Let us know your questions or thoughts! Get in touch with us at community@bitly.com or tweet at @bitly.

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 total click counts for your link you can also see referral breakdowns and click counts over the past 30 days represented in a bar graph. With these stats you can gain a better understanding of how active your links are across the web.

Individual Bitmark Stats

When you head to your stats page, the first thing you’ll see is a list of your most recently saved bitmarks. For additional information on any bitmark click the title. Next to each bitmark will be stats for clicks via your shortlink, total clicks, and total saves.  

What do these mean?

Clicks via your shortlink- How many total clicks your bitmark has received
Total Clicks- Click count for all saved bitmarks that direct to that long URL
Total Saves- How many users have saved this long URL as a bitmark

Bar Graph

The bar graph shows click counts and the number of links created over the past 30 days. Use the dropdown menu to the right of the bar graph to change the timeframe of reported stats. You can even set up a tracking domain to see all click traffic to your site from bitly links.

Pie Graphs 

Two pie graphs are located underneath the bar graph. The ‘Referrers’ pie graph shows traffic referrals from different sources online.  The ‘Locations’ graph gives a representation of what countries your clicks are coming from.

With your stats page you can gain a better idea of how active your bitmarks are on the web and where their click traffic is driven from. Still have questions? Let us know in the comments or shoot an email to support@bitly.com. We’d be happy to help.

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 click - this means we line up all the clicks on a link in time order and then find the time of the middle click and subtract from it the time of the first click. This is the amount of time it took for a page to receive half the traffic it’s ever likely to see.

We like this way of thinking about the consumption dynamics of a page for two reasons. It captures both the large initial burst of interest on a page as well as the long, heavy tail of readership in the latter stages of a page’s life cycle.

Don’t Blink if You’re Watching Sports

In general, we found that topic doesn’t have a large measurable effect on the halflife of a link, with one notable exception: sports. In this case, a large proportion of the links have a halflife of less than 200 minutes, which means that a page about sports have a much shorter amount of time to capture their audience.

By contrast, as shown in the plot below, pages about business are much more likely than sports to have a longer half life, and so publishers of this material can expect halflives of up to 500 minutes.

Figure 1: distribution of halflife by topic. Sports pages, shown in orange, are much more likely to have a short halflife (<200 minutes) whereas Business pages, shown in purple, have a more even distribution of short and long halflives.

It shouldn’t come as a surprise that sports fan are only interested in the freshest news, but it does come as a surprise that so many other topics are surprisingly consistent.

Using bundles to communicate within your organization

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 office in DUMBO, Brooklyn.

Tell us a little about Huge.
Huge is a digital agency that provides business strategy, design, marketing and technology services to some of the world’s largest businesses and best-known brands. We’re based in DUMBO, Brooklyn, but we have offices in Los Angeles, London, Rio de Janeiro, Portland, San Francisco and Washington, D.C.

How do you use bitly?
We use bitly to convert links to our custom domain, huge.is, whenever we share on Twitter or Facebook. We’ll also use bitly to shorten long URLs to make them look neat and branded in emails to clients. Every week, we create a bitly bundle of links to five articles that our Strategy team read and found interesting. We call it the Huge Download and it’s curated by various members of our Strategy team. We share the bundle in an email to Huge employees, as well as on Facebook and Twitter.

What has Huge discovered through using bundles?
It’s interesting to see what types of content are most interesting to Huge employees. We test various headline copy styles and different article types and take a look at how the click-through rates vary. It’s no surprise that provocative headlines get the highest click-throughs, while data-intense or research-heavy articles have lower activity. Through testing, we’ve also found that mid-morning on Monday is a sweet spot for our group.

We’re in the process of looking at the last year of bitly data and putting together an “agency profile” based on reading habits. We hope to uncover some interesting insights about our group. We’re also designing a survey to better understand what our team wants to see more of, and how they’re using the information – we know that some people have used it for projects or have sent the articles to clients.

How have bundles helped impact the office culture?
Bundles have definitely helped keep everyone informed of the latest digital trends and news. Most Huge employees read so many different articles that it’s been good for our Strategy group to be able to organize a discussion around a finite list of pieces each week. It has given more people in the organization, like those in the design and technology disciplines, access to Huge’s strategic thinking. It also helps our strategists get feedback and ideas from people outside their group.

Do you have any tips or best practices for those who want to get started bundling?
bundles are a great communication tool for us. We use them to share information and package up disparate links, so a best practice would be to continually monitor and watch performance. Analytics are so important everywhere, so to see and understand how bundles are working as a communication tool helps inform our communication decisions. The analytics make it easy to see what’s working, what’s not, and what changes need to be made.

The Huge office in DUMBO.

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Want to start using bundles in your office? Learn the basics here. We’d also love to hear how you use bundles in your everyday life. Reach out to us at community[at]bitly.com, or leave a comment below.

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. Maybe you’re planning a fall themed weekend and need a way to save all  the activities you’d like to attend? Or you’re in charge of a meetup, organization, or university that holds lots of events and want an easy way to remind your community of what’s happening? Whatever the events may be- bundles make it easier for people to discover what’s happening and where.

Duke University shares a weekly bundle of events with their student body that is a selection of film screenings, guest speakers, and info sessions that students should not miss that week. At bitly, we create bundles of all the events team members will be attending or speaking at during the month. It’s a nice way to see what everyone is up to when they’re out of the office and lets us easily share where we’ll be with the wider community. Interested in knowing what events the bitly team will be at this October? Check out our bundle, “bitly out and about in October”.

You can also use a bundle to plan out the events you’d like to attend. Want to have your list at the tip of your fingers? Just download the bitly iPhone app (now with bundles!).

Some tips to keep in mind when bundling

• Write a description: Let people know what your bundle is all about. If you add a URL it will hyperlink.

• Invite Curators: Easily collaborate with others who might also be interested in attending the events or are somehow involved in what you’re sharing. You can invite up to 12 curators. They’ll receive an invite asking to join you.

• Add comments: Comments will let you have a conversation between curators and give you the opportunity to include as much additional information as you’d like in your bundle. Maybe it’s an extra tidbit about the event, a tip on how to get there, a way to get in touch with the speaker directly, or a fun detail about the event that isn’t included in the link you’re sharing.

That’s it! Have a bundle ready to go? Share your bundles with us in the comments below or tweet @bitly.