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Twitter URL Service Bit.ly Says No to Ads, Yes to Data-Mining News

40 points by aditya 17y ago

adamhowell 17y ago
Twitter is what TinyURL has been waiting -- literally -- years for. And they get their feet swept by a shorter domain and a couple extra features. Crazy.
- andrewbadera 17y ago
  Such is disruption. TinyURL hasn't changed in years unfortunately. Total lack of innovation after they lucked into that first swipe of goodness.
- wmeredith 17y ago
  Whatever. URL shortening in and off itself is easy. TinyURL had nothing stolen from them. The only thing that mattered about bit.lky was those extra features.
  - RyanMcGreal 17y ago
    bit.lky I hope that spelling was intentional. :)
- ivankirigin 17y ago
  Have you ever heard how bitly works? It is really "over engineered" on purpose to be in a completely different category from other shorteners.
  - akd 17y ago
    where can I read about this architecture / overengineering?
    - ivankirigin 17y ago
      I've only heard it from the horse's mouth. Their FAQ has a bit http://bit.ly/pages/faq/ http://bit.ly/pages/faq/
jasongullickson 17y ago
It's refreshing to see a company looking for a more creative way to generate revenue than simply slapping advertising on as an afterthought. The idea of using this data to build a news site is brilliant, and adds to the usefulness and quality of the service instead of detracting from it or adding complexity. Bravo.
- icey 17y ago
  If bit.ly can make this work, I think it's an amazing idea. I already want to see the site he's talking about.
- axod 17y ago
  It's genius! Instead of slapping advertising on, you build a news site. Hmm wait a minute, how does the news site make money again?
  - brandnewlow 17y ago
    Yeah, seriously. How do they make money? Selling the news back to other sites?
    - axod 17y ago
      I think next they make a widget so you can tweet about the news.
      - brandnewlow 17y ago
        Which makes money....how? At some point, they have to ask people for money. if they're not going to ask users for money, then they're just going to be another B2B business whose job is to sell stuff to other businesses, advertising or not.
    - ryoshu 17y ago
      They make money by aggregating the activity and doing real-time and historical analysis. People will pay very good money for those things, especially with the size of the datasets bit.ly has at its disposal.
chime 17y ago
> "... We were able to see the Neda video out of Iran trending well before CNN linked it in, and we’ve begun to refine our capabilities there to be able to pinpoint stories like that." He said part of this technique involves looking for links being shared by unlike people, because that means they have universal appeal. This is why I fell in love with computer science. I can already imagine the use of a good shortest path algorithm combined with collaborative filtering (Netflix competition-type algorithms) being used to tackle this problem in real-time. You are given a unique url and 1000 twitter accounts that linked to it. You also have the entire twitter-follower digraph. Now design an algorithm to calculate the "universality" factor with the lowest Big O. Now do this 10k times a second for 10k unique urls.
- brandnewlow 17y ago
  I have to point out that anyone who spends time on the web knew about that video before CNN linked to it. Reddit, Digg, Twitter itself....
jamesk2 17y ago
The .ly TLD is Libya. Is it safe to use .ly domains like bit.ly does? Will Libya just jack the domain name Cuba style?

40 points by aditya 17y ago

Twitter is what TinyURL has been waiting -- literally -- years for. And they get their feet swept by a shorter domain and a couple extra features. Crazy.

andrewbadera 17y ago
Such is disruption. TinyURL hasn't changed in years unfortunately. Total lack of innovation after they lucked into that first swipe of goodness.
wmeredith 17y ago
Whatever. URL shortening in and off itself is easy. TinyURL had nothing stolen from them. The only thing that mattered about bit.lky was those extra features.
- RyanMcGreal 17y ago
  bit.lky I hope that spelling was intentional. :)
ivankirigin 17y ago
Have you ever heard how bitly works? It is really "over engineered" on purpose to be in a completely different category from other shorteners.
- akd 17y ago
  where can I read about this architecture / overengineering?
  - ivankirigin 17y ago
    I've only heard it from the horse's mouth. Their FAQ has a bit http://bit.ly/pages/faq/ http://bit.ly/pages/faq/

jasongullickson 17y ago

It's refreshing to see a company looking for a more creative way to generate revenue than simply slapping advertising on as an afterthought. The idea of using this data to build a news site is brilliant, and adds to the usefulness and quality of the service instead of detracting from it or adding complexity. Bravo.

icey 17y ago
If bit.ly can make this work, I think it's an amazing idea. I already want to see the site he's talking about.
axod 17y ago
It's genius! Instead of slapping advertising on, you build a news site. Hmm wait a minute, how does the news site make money again?
- brandnewlow 17y ago
  Yeah, seriously. How do they make money? Selling the news back to other sites?
  - axod 17y ago
    I think next they make a widget so you can tweet about the news.
    - brandnewlow 17y ago
      Which makes money....how? At some point, they have to ask people for money. if they're not going to ask users for money, then they're just going to be another B2B business whose job is to sell stuff to other businesses, advertising or not.
  - ryoshu 17y ago
    They make money by aggregating the activity and doing real-time and historical analysis. People will pay very good money for those things, especially with the size of the datasets bit.ly has at its disposal.

chime 17y ago

> "... We were able to see the Neda video out of Iran trending well before CNN linked it in, and we’ve begun to refine our capabilities there to be able to pinpoint stories like that." He said part of this technique involves looking for links being shared by unlike people, because that means they have universal appeal. This is why I fell in love with computer science. I can already imagine the use of a good shortest path algorithm combined with collaborative filtering (Netflix competition-type algorithms) being used to tackle this problem in real-time. You are given a unique url and 1000 twitter accounts that linked to it. You also have the entire twitter-follower digraph. Now design an algorithm to calculate the "universality" factor with the lowest Big O. Now do this 10k times a second for 10k unique urls.

brandnewlow 17y ago
I have to point out that anyone who spends time on the web knew about that video before CNN linked to it. Reddit, Digg, Twitter itself....

jamesk2 17y ago

The .ly TLD is Libya. Is it safe to use .ly domains like bit.ly does? Will Libya just jack the domain name Cuba style?