5 ms·

Bit.ly's shady business model

78 points by ozkatz 12y ago

0x0 12y ago
On the other hand: What if bit.ly shut down operations / went bankrupt / lost all their data? Would that change anything for you? This is like bit.ly shutting down. Except! If you pay a fee, they won't shut down after all. But I do agree that hiding pricing in small print is uncool.
ddorian43 12y ago
Create a script to follow those urls and migrate and byebye?
- jonlucc 12y ago
  I thought about this, but they still have the problem that the old links shared won't resolve. EDIT: mseebach is right, they just have to copy the link format
  - mseebach 12y ago
    Why not? They have their own domain that they'll presumably point to a new service.
dangoldin 12y ago
Although it sucks I wouldn't claim it's a shady business model. It seems more like the obvious one - make the custom URL option paid and they have their pricing clearly laid out - https://bitly.com/a/pricing https://bitly.com/a/pricing And you have a few days to crawl the URLs and see what you get.
- davidblueit 12y ago
  the way the site is structured, the pricing only seems to be for the Bitly Brand Tools. There doesn't seem any other pricing info for just link shortening
keehun 12y ago
Time to scrape the URLs and resolve them yourself!
mcmillion 12y ago
If your product is taking off, learn from your mistake of not following the ToS and just build your own in-house URL shortener.
- ozkatz 12y ago
  Very true. Not shying away from my responsibility. I'm mostly to blame. And still - can't say I like bit.ly's way of doing business.
  - stronglikedan 12y ago
    Really, you are more than "mostly" to blame; you are "completely" to blame. You're also bordering on defamation, so you should probably reconsider your article. As I said on the comment on your site: > Nothing is "deep within" the TOS, if you do what you are supposed to do when using it as part of your business model, and read it in it's entirety. You completely and solely failed in your due diligence.
  - xtracto 12y ago
    You should really put the article up again... it is disgusting when people won't stand for their actions and try to hide what they did. I would very much prefer you give an apology at the top of your text, rather than trying to sneak away by removing your original writing. Fortunately, Archive.org has the original: https://web.archive.org/web/20140612150420/http://ozkatz.github.io/bitlys-shady-business-model.html?hn https://web.archive.org/web/20140612150420/http://ozkatz.git...
lost_name 12y ago
I feel it's a little underhanded call it shady while simultaneous admitting the information was there in a document you opted not to read as you built your business around it.
- markbnj 12y ago
  I agree. The post title is very unfortunately worded. There's nothing shady about bit.ly adhering to, and expecting the OP to adhere to, their clearly-stated business policies.
spacefight 12y ago
I guess a few other businesses will be approached by them same way. Running your own shorter sounds like a must these days.
eduardordm 12y ago
If you click on "pricing" you will see this: "STARTING AT $995/month". I think that's pretty clear. Maybe the service changed and they started to charge and they didn't notify you. Link: https://bitly.com/a/pricing https://bitly.com/a/pricing And a quote: "Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity" - Robert J. Hanlon. --- Edit (please read this) Oz Kats said: "as of april last year when we signed up for bit.ly that page was nowhere to be found" My reply: That actually changes everything. As I understand, they are not retaining your data, but will pull the plug on a service you now depend and are not offering migration options, am I correct? This is certainly an awful business practice it could be illegal, but there is a problem. At the time they failed to communicate the pricing so you started using their service, judging it would be free. If they started to charge, you could just pay or move to another provider, but the very model of their tool makes it impossible for you to truly "migrate" to another provider since the links are widespread, this isn't exactly their fault (nor yours). If they are charging you 995$ just because they know you are out of options you might have a case, but that's so time/money consuming I would advise you to just do your best to migrate the widespread links. Best of luck
- davidblueit 12y ago
  there's no link to that page before signing up... no link from the home page that i can see. I think that's pretty unclear
  - eduardordm 12y ago
    "Learn More" then "Pricing" or any page that shows the product has the pricing link on the navigation bar.
  - pushplay 12y ago
    The pricing link isn't at the top of the home page, but it is at the top of 'Features' and 'Get Started.' More over, the list of clients at the bottom includes some large companies. Surely you must realize that someone is paying for something here. I think Facebook and Google have lulled us into a false, unquestioning expectation that online services are free; when really we should be suspicious of any company claiming to offer a free service.
lnanek2 12y ago
Not sure why they don't just brute force their data out. Back when Google was hiding Google I/O redeem codes with goo.gl links, I brute forced thousands of links out of that shortener, just using 20 lines of bash script. I was just trying random codes and got one that led to a URL once per second or so. So I could pull down 300k links in a few days. Their case would be a lot quicker because it sounds like they have all the valid bit.ly links, just not where they lead to.
benmanns 12y ago
If you keep track of either the short URL or the long URL somewhere on your end, you can get the other part using bitly's link API: http://dev.bitly.com/links.html http://dev.bitly.com/links.html and the associated metrics with the link metrics API: http://dev.bitly.com/link_metrics.html http://dev.bitly.com/link_metrics.html -- Once you have that, you can write a simple app (or use any of the free ones out there) to provide the same service. Or honestly, just pay the $700 if it's not worth the dev investment and provides a significant value to your service.
ForHackernews 12y ago
Wait, so you've been actively violating their terms of service for months, and now you're mad that they want you to start paying for the commercial use you've already been doing? Explain to me again how bit.ly are the bad guys here?
Alupis 12y ago
It seems the article writer not only did not read the TOS before signing up, but also make a critical error of thinking they could use the service for free at the tune of 50,000 links per month! They built their company around another company's free service, ignored the fact that Bitly has to make money off their service somehow (guess what, they charge for high volume customers), and then became outraged when bitly told them they needed to pay up. If link shortening is so integral to the business, why have they not implemented their own link shortener? Quit complaining you got something for free and abused it, and now they want you to pay them for the apparently critical service they provide you with.
jondot 12y ago
Sounds like your mistake. If your business relies on link shortening, you should identify it early in the process and build your own. I don't use personally and every now and then I examine the reasoning of delegating parts of my products to 3rd party providers.
leorocky 12y ago
You could write your own exporter pretty trivially, using their API or resolving the URLs.
krelian 12y ago
I really don't see the problem here. Did you have access to the export feature before and now it's been removed? If you did, you don't have any backups? Building a business around a 3rd party service that you are not paying for without carefully reading the TOS or doing some research beforehand is a big mistake. The least you could do is save a copy of all the data for easy (read: reduced pain) migration in case it's ever needed.
dublinben 12y ago
I'm amazed that they thought it was a smart business decision to rely on a free bit.ly account (with their own domain!) instead of running their own URL shortener. Yourls (https://yourls.org/ https://yourls.org/) is free and open source, and has been around for years. There's an excellent reason why every major publisher operates their own URL shortening service, and this article demonstrates it perfectly.
hyperliner 12y ago
Glad the OP is coming clean saying it's their fault, but calling bitly shady for doing what they said they were going to do for the money that they said they were going to charge (or not charge) seems like a low blow.
andrewvc 12y ago
This is absurd. I was the CTO at a startup with a small budget and looked into bit.ly. You know what I did? I looked at their damn TOS, because when you're running a business you look at ALL your third party service's TOS's. ESPECIALLY the free ones. It was quite nice of bit.ly to voluntarily cut your bill. Instead of learning something valuable about how the market works you've shifted the blame to someone else. You would do well to reflect on these events and ask yourself why instead of accepting your own error here you've pushed the blame onto bit.ly.
- pduszak 12y ago
  But... why can't they just give me free things? I don't see a problem with building my business atop the back of another and sharing 0% of the profit. /s
  - ozkatz 12y ago
    I've also updated the post to reflect this: I don't mind paying. Its the policy of not leaving me a choice to do so by not allowing me to export my data and go elsewhere that bothers me.
    - jasode 12y ago
      How would they realistically "allow" you to export your data? Would it require extra programmer effort and cost to develop such export functionality? If they didn't invest the money to build that capability, why would they want to? What's the ROI for them to do it? It took several years for GMail to have mailbox export capabilities. Some team somewhere has to write and test all that code.
      - jplur 12y ago
        Is there even data to export? It appears to me the OP would need the bit.ly domain to preserve the links, otherwise he could just scrape all the URLs and find a way to redirect them.
trevorhinesley 12y ago
This is 100% your fault.
Tomte 12y ago
So basically you used a service that costs money, you didn't pay any, and now you're peeved that they'd actually like to collect? > They could have dropped any other amount they wanted They probably told you "the usual amount". Are there any grounds for suspicion that they are quoting you some outrageous price? I don't see what could qualify as "shady" here. And btw: from a very possible point of view they might think you didn't forget to read the small print, you deliberately tried to defraud them by acting as if you were non-commercial. They can't look inside your head.
cjslep 12y ago
adf.ly has always seemed more shady to me than bit.ly.
Cakez0r 12y ago
I think it's perfectly reasonable that bit.ly would want to charge for heavy usage of their service and are unwilling to spend their resources helping another company migrate away from their service because they decided they don't want to pay for it. It's unfair to call out bit.ly as having a shady business model when you build a service that relies on a third party and don't even bother to do you due diligence and find out the licensing costs!
Mvandenbergh 12y ago
So the only place that this mysterious information was documented (apart from Bit.ly's website) was in the TOS. In other words, the contract governing the relationship between the two businesses. Who would ever expect to look in such a place?
quadlock 12y ago
It's one thing to not read the whole TOS for services you consume and pay for, but ignoring it when using it commercially? Don't blame them and call them shady. They have to pay their employees and server costs to provide you the service.
abc123xyz 12y ago
It would take a few hours of coding to throw together a url shortening service just for your needs, and since no one else be using it the amount of coding is trivial!
johnward 12y ago
Bit.ly could have just stopped redirecting your urls, waited for you to figure out why and contact them. They didn't do that. They contacted you and gave you a chance to fix what you are doing wrong. Plus they probably could bill you for past traffic but they aren't doing that either.
chrisBob 12y ago
Are you using a paid bit.ly account? They have instructions on getting a list of all of the links you have created here: http://support.bitly.com/knowledgebase/articles/241695--paid-where-can-i-find-a-list-of-the-links-i-have http://support.bitly.com/knowledgebase/articles/241695--paid... It also seems like it should be straight forward crawl all of the links your users have created to build your own database of all of the URLs. If you are not already a paying customer then I think they are letting you off easy. You are basing a business on a freemium product and the free part just ran out.
nathas 12y ago
If you sign in, under the "Settings" -> "Branded Short Domain" section, there are two links. One says "Personal", and lets you continue along without pricing being mentioned. Then there's a "Business" link that forces you talk with Bitly -- I'm assuming because you would have immediately been notified that it cost money. You abused a service, and now you're upset because you can't scam them. Cool.
tchai_ 12y ago
I'll tell you what's shady, using a non-commercial service heavily for commercial gain and then expected them to roll-over and help you bugger off else where.
JabavuAdams 12y ago
This piece would come off a lot better with a "Hey startups did you know that ..." spin, rather than implying that there's anything shady about Bitly. This is absolutely useful information, and thanks for sharing. That said, calling the model "shady" or "not cool", etc. isn't really defused by the writer's repeated mea culpas.
frostmatthew 12y ago
The article has been updated to say "My biggest gripe with bit.ly is not their pricing, it's their policy of not letting users export their data and by that locking their users in." - so basically in addition to building his business around violating terms of service he couldn't be bothered to read he also never considered vendor lock-in. When choosing any technology or service one shouldn't expect there to always be an easy way to switch. Vendor lock-in is something that needs to be considered and investigated before deciding a technology or service. With the author's updated "biggest gripe" it sounds like he would consider it Oracle's fault if he built his business using OracleDB and then decided to switch to MongoDB. I never heard of Swayy before reading this article - but it did a lot more to convince me to never consider using it than convince me of anything "shady" on bit.ly's end.
theboss 12y ago
I'm curious. To people who have purchased bitly, why? I feel like setting it up would take as long as writing your own. My very first web project I ever did was to write a url shortener and it took me less than an afternoon. A good engineer I'm sure could do it in less than an hour. For the price, what does it get you?

78 points by ozkatz 12y ago

0x0 12y ago

On the other hand: What if bit.ly shut down operations / went bankrupt / lost all their data? Would that change anything for you? This is like bit.ly shutting down. Except! If you pay a fee, they won't shut down after all. But I do agree that hiding pricing in small print is uncool.

ddorian43 12y ago

Create a script to follow those urls and migrate and byebye?

jonlucc 12y ago
I thought about this, but they still have the problem that the old links shared won't resolve. EDIT: mseebach is right, they just have to copy the link format
- mseebach 12y ago
  Why not? They have their own domain that they'll presumably point to a new service.

dangoldin 12y ago

Although it sucks I wouldn't claim it's a shady business model. It seems more like the obvious one - make the custom URL option paid and they have their pricing clearly laid out - https://bitly.com/a/pricing https://bitly.com/a/pricing And you have a few days to crawl the URLs and see what you get.

davidblueit 12y ago
the way the site is structured, the pricing only seems to be for the Bitly Brand Tools. There doesn't seem any other pricing info for just link shortening

keehun 12y ago

Time to scrape the URLs and resolve them yourself!

mcmillion 12y ago

If your product is taking off, learn from your mistake of not following the ToS and just build your own in-house URL shortener.

ozkatz 12y ago
Very true. Not shying away from my responsibility. I'm mostly to blame. And still - can't say I like bit.ly's way of doing business.
- stronglikedan 12y ago
  Really, you are more than "mostly" to blame; you are "completely" to blame. You're also bordering on defamation, so you should probably reconsider your article. As I said on the comment on your site: > Nothing is "deep within" the TOS, if you do what you are supposed to do when using it as part of your business model, and read it in it's entirety. You completely and solely failed in your due diligence.
- xtracto 12y ago
  You should really put the article up again... it is disgusting when people won't stand for their actions and try to hide what they did. I would very much prefer you give an apology at the top of your text, rather than trying to sneak away by removing your original writing. Fortunately, Archive.org has the original: https://web.archive.org/web/20140612150420/http://ozkatz.github.io/bitlys-shady-business-model.html?hn https://web.archive.org/web/20140612150420/http://ozkatz.git...

lost_name 12y ago

I feel it's a little underhanded call it shady while simultaneous admitting the information was there in a document you opted not to read as you built your business around it.

markbnj 12y ago
I agree. The post title is very unfortunately worded. There's nothing shady about bit.ly adhering to, and expecting the OP to adhere to, their clearly-stated business policies.

spacefight 12y ago

I guess a few other businesses will be approached by them same way. Running your own shorter sounds like a must these days.

eduardordm 12y ago

If you click on "pricing" you will see this: "STARTING AT $995/month". I think that's pretty clear. Maybe the service changed and they started to charge and they didn't notify you. Link: https://bitly.com/a/pricing https://bitly.com/a/pricing And a quote: "Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity" - Robert J. Hanlon. --- Edit (please read this) Oz Kats said: "as of april last year when we signed up for bit.ly that page was nowhere to be found" My reply: That actually changes everything. As I understand, they are not retaining your data, but will pull the plug on a service you now depend and are not offering migration options, am I correct? This is certainly an awful business practice it could be illegal, but there is a problem. At the time they failed to communicate the pricing so you started using their service, judging it would be free. If they started to charge, you could just pay or move to another provider, but the very model of their tool makes it impossible for you to truly "migrate" to another provider since the links are widespread, this isn't exactly their fault (nor yours). If they are charging you 995$ just because they know you are out of options you might have a case, but that's so time/money consuming I would advise you to just do your best to migrate the widespread links. Best of luck

davidblueit 12y ago
there's no link to that page before signing up... no link from the home page that i can see. I think that's pretty unclear
- eduardordm 12y ago
  "Learn More" then "Pricing" or any page that shows the product has the pricing link on the navigation bar.
- pushplay 12y ago
  The pricing link isn't at the top of the home page, but it is at the top of 'Features' and 'Get Started.' More over, the list of clients at the bottom includes some large companies. Surely you must realize that someone is paying for something here. I think Facebook and Google have lulled us into a false, unquestioning expectation that online services are free; when really we should be suspicious of any company claiming to offer a free service.

lnanek2 12y ago

Not sure why they don't just brute force their data out. Back when Google was hiding Google I/O redeem codes with goo.gl links, I brute forced thousands of links out of that shortener, just using 20 lines of bash script. I was just trying random codes and got one that led to a URL once per second or so. So I could pull down 300k links in a few days. Their case would be a lot quicker because it sounds like they have all the valid bit.ly links, just not where they lead to.

benmanns 12y ago

If you keep track of either the short URL or the long URL somewhere on your end, you can get the other part using bitly's link API: http://dev.bitly.com/links.html http://dev.bitly.com/links.html and the associated metrics with the link metrics API: http://dev.bitly.com/link_metrics.html http://dev.bitly.com/link_metrics.html -- Once you have that, you can write a simple app (or use any of the free ones out there) to provide the same service. Or honestly, just pay the $700 if it's not worth the dev investment and provides a significant value to your service.

ForHackernews 12y ago

Wait, so you've been actively violating their terms of service for months, and now you're mad that they want you to start paying for the commercial use you've already been doing? Explain to me again how bit.ly are the bad guys here?

Alupis 12y ago

It seems the article writer not only did not read the TOS before signing up, but also make a critical error of thinking they could use the service for free at the tune of 50,000 links per month! They built their company around another company's free service, ignored the fact that Bitly has to make money off their service somehow (guess what, they charge for high volume customers), and then became outraged when bitly told them they needed to pay up. If link shortening is so integral to the business, why have they not implemented their own link shortener? Quit complaining you got something for free and abused it, and now they want you to pay them for the apparently critical service they provide you with.

jondot 12y ago

Sounds like your mistake. If your business relies on link shortening, you should identify it early in the process and build your own. I don't use personally and every now and then I examine the reasoning of delegating parts of my products to 3rd party providers.

leorocky 12y ago

You could write your own exporter pretty trivially, using their API or resolving the URLs.

krelian 12y ago

I really don't see the problem here. Did you have access to the export feature before and now it's been removed? If you did, you don't have any backups? Building a business around a 3rd party service that you are not paying for without carefully reading the TOS or doing some research beforehand is a big mistake. The least you could do is save a copy of all the data for easy (read: reduced pain) migration in case it's ever needed.

dublinben 12y ago

I'm amazed that they thought it was a smart business decision to rely on a free bit.ly account (with their own domain!) instead of running their own URL shortener. Yourls (https://yourls.org/ https://yourls.org/) is free and open source, and has been around for years. There's an excellent reason why every major publisher operates their own URL shortening service, and this article demonstrates it perfectly.

hyperliner 12y ago

Glad the OP is coming clean saying it's their fault, but calling bitly shady for doing what they said they were going to do for the money that they said they were going to charge (or not charge) seems like a low blow.

andrewvc 12y ago

This is absurd. I was the CTO at a startup with a small budget and looked into bit.ly. You know what I did? I looked at their damn TOS, because when you're running a business you look at ALL your third party service's TOS's. ESPECIALLY the free ones. It was quite nice of bit.ly to voluntarily cut your bill. Instead of learning something valuable about how the market works you've shifted the blame to someone else. You would do well to reflect on these events and ask yourself why instead of accepting your own error here you've pushed the blame onto bit.ly.

pduszak 12y ago
But... why can't they just give me free things? I don't see a problem with building my business atop the back of another and sharing 0% of the profit. /s
- ozkatz 12y ago
  I've also updated the post to reflect this: I don't mind paying. Its the policy of not leaving me a choice to do so by not allowing me to export my data and go elsewhere that bothers me.
  - jasode 12y ago
    How would they realistically "allow" you to export your data? Would it require extra programmer effort and cost to develop such export functionality? If they didn't invest the money to build that capability, why would they want to? What's the ROI for them to do it? It took several years for GMail to have mailbox export capabilities. Some team somewhere has to write and test all that code.
    - jplur 12y ago
      Is there even data to export? It appears to me the OP would need the bit.ly domain to preserve the links, otherwise he could just scrape all the URLs and find a way to redirect them.

trevorhinesley 12y ago

This is 100% your fault.

Tomte 12y ago

So basically you used a service that costs money, you didn't pay any, and now you're peeved that they'd actually like to collect? > They could have dropped any other amount they wanted They probably told you "the usual amount". Are there any grounds for suspicion that they are quoting you some outrageous price? I don't see what could qualify as "shady" here. And btw: from a very possible point of view they might think you didn't forget to read the small print, you deliberately tried to defraud them by acting as if you were non-commercial. They can't look inside your head.

cjslep 12y ago

adf.ly has always seemed more shady to me than bit.ly.

Cakez0r 12y ago

I think it's perfectly reasonable that bit.ly would want to charge for heavy usage of their service and are unwilling to spend their resources helping another company migrate away from their service because they decided they don't want to pay for it. It's unfair to call out bit.ly as having a shady business model when you build a service that relies on a third party and don't even bother to do you due diligence and find out the licensing costs!

Mvandenbergh 12y ago

So the only place that this mysterious information was documented (apart from Bit.ly's website) was in the TOS. In other words, the contract governing the relationship between the two businesses. Who would ever expect to look in such a place?

quadlock 12y ago

It's one thing to not read the whole TOS for services you consume and pay for, but ignoring it when using it commercially? Don't blame them and call them shady. They have to pay their employees and server costs to provide you the service.

abc123xyz 12y ago

It would take a few hours of coding to throw together a url shortening service just for your needs, and since no one else be using it the amount of coding is trivial!

johnward 12y ago

Bit.ly could have just stopped redirecting your urls, waited for you to figure out why and contact them. They didn't do that. They contacted you and gave you a chance to fix what you are doing wrong. Plus they probably could bill you for past traffic but they aren't doing that either.

chrisBob 12y ago

Are you using a paid bit.ly account? They have instructions on getting a list of all of the links you have created here: http://support.bitly.com/knowledgebase/articles/241695--paid-where-can-i-find-a-list-of-the-links-i-have http://support.bitly.com/knowledgebase/articles/241695--paid... It also seems like it should be straight forward crawl all of the links your users have created to build your own database of all of the URLs. If you are not already a paying customer then I think they are letting you off easy. You are basing a business on a freemium product and the free part just ran out.

nathas 12y ago

If you sign in, under the "Settings" -> "Branded Short Domain" section, there are two links. One says "Personal", and lets you continue along without pricing being mentioned. Then there's a "Business" link that forces you talk with Bitly -- I'm assuming because you would have immediately been notified that it cost money. You abused a service, and now you're upset because you can't scam them. Cool.

tchai_ 12y ago

I'll tell you what's shady, using a non-commercial service heavily for commercial gain and then expected them to roll-over and help you bugger off else where.

JabavuAdams 12y ago

This piece would come off a lot better with a "Hey startups did you know that ..." spin, rather than implying that there's anything shady about Bitly. This is absolutely useful information, and thanks for sharing. That said, calling the model "shady" or "not cool", etc. isn't really defused by the writer's repeated mea culpas.

frostmatthew 12y ago

The article has been updated to say "My biggest gripe with bit.ly is not their pricing, it's their policy of not letting users export their data and by that locking their users in." - so basically in addition to building his business around violating terms of service he couldn't be bothered to read he also never considered vendor lock-in. When choosing any technology or service one shouldn't expect there to always be an easy way to switch. Vendor lock-in is something that needs to be considered and investigated before deciding a technology or service. With the author's updated "biggest gripe" it sounds like he would consider it Oracle's fault if he built his business using OracleDB and then decided to switch to MongoDB. I never heard of Swayy before reading this article - but it did a lot more to convince me to never consider using it than convince me of anything "shady" on bit.ly's end.

theboss 12y ago

I'm curious. To people who have purchased bitly, why? I feel like setting it up would take as long as writing your own. My very first web project I ever did was to write a url shortener and it took me less than an afternoon. A good engineer I'm sure could do it in less than an hour. For the price, what does it get you?