What it does

Super long url’s getting you down? They are something of a hassle, what with their seemingly never ending letters, symbols and characters. Help is to be had however (lots of it actually). Take Bitly for instance. This url shortener has quickly become a darling amongst tech bloggers, who have fallen for it like no other. It does what your standard url shortener does, namely, shorten urls for sharing in emails or IMs. Bitly doesn’t stop there, though. Bitly is perfect for professionals in the tech industry. It’s got an open API and platform, along with stats, an archive and page thumbnails. Bitly can also process bits of page content to be displayed for matching with other similar content. Also, of note, Bitly’s parent company, Betaworks, invest in Twitter, so there may be a connection there in the near future.

In their own words

“http://bit.ly/ is a URL-shortener with lots of new stuff designed for an app developer who needs everything and more!”

Why it might be a killer

Bitly is well positioned to become one of the top url shorteners around. Given its open access API and platform, and its Twitter connections, Bitly could very well make it big. It’s got what appears to be a solid business model, with premium memberships and upgrades too.

Some questions

What’s Bitly’s pitch to win over consumers? Will non techies be attracted to this shortener, given the 70+ that are already out there?

Source: Killerstartups.com