The .LY in Link Shrinking (A Closer Look at Bit.ly and Ow.ly)

Hundreds of link shortening services are available today, but I believe some research and consideration is a must before embracing two of the more popular services. Let me explain. Bit.ly and ow.ly are two link shrinking services that are trending toward greater acceptance. A NY Times article from this summer estimated that bit.ly accounted for 46 percent of all links shortened.

Bit.ly’s recent success is a derivative of Twitter’s integration with bit.ly as their default link shortening service. Unlike the hundreds of other services, bit.ly has focused on reliability and basic analytics. Tinyurl, the original link shrinker, never embraced value-added services and had some issues with reliability, which most likely explains why Twitter shifted from Tinyurl to bit.ly. Also, bit.ly has attracted several well-recognized investors to solidify their dominance in the link shrinking space. [...]