Why Bit.ly Matters

Bit.ly launched today.

The statistics and thumbnail functionality they offer should be enough to get some share in the url-shortener space, espcially if they can realise >99.99% uptime, and cache all the temporary content that is being linked to in hasty online conversations.

But the real purpose of a service like Bit.ly would be to expose your influence.

They gather data on people ’s usage of links in todays online conversations (microblogs in particular). Their analysis of the data they acquire is of real meaning to application developers and marketeers: developers can build smart information harvesting and filtering applications, marketeers get the chance to see who are the real ‘influencers’ (who’s words are driving traffic to what sites on what topics).

There’s some interesting business.

It will be interesting to see if they can get some market share.