URL Shortener Goes Pro

[engine]

URL Shortener Goes Pro [blog.bit.ly]

bit.ly Pro. The Pro service provides custom short URLs powered by bit.ly. Publishers and bloggers will be able to use their own short domain names to point to pages on their sites.

As part of our initial beta program, we’re making custom URLs available to a limited number of large and medium-sized Web publishers and bloggers,
Users and publishers benefit from the additional transparency that this private-label service provides. When you see a short URL like nyti.ms, you know the destination web site before clicking on the link. The service includes all the bit.ly features users and publishers have come to expect. Placing a simple “+” at the end of any bit.ly link (including these white-label, bit.ly-powered links) takes you to real-time information about that page and how it is being shared: how many people clicked on that particular link, where they came from, and more. For publishers, the new service allows them to keep their brand visible while maintaining access to bit.ly statistics.

We’re also excited to be introducing a unique real-time dashboard that will provide publishers with even more information about their bit.ly traffic.

I do like thr idea that it tells you it's a large/medium-sized publisher. It still doesn't stop the phishers, of course.

[wheel]

I'm not very knowledgeable about URL shorteners, but I rarely if ever will click on a shortened link - because I don't know where it's going. I just delete or ignore.

[swa66]

Hmm. With other services starting to poor in on these tinyurl clones (fb.me from facebook) goo.gl (from google) and with a nearly trivial way to use your own redirect anyway, is statistics the only advantage to all of this ? Statistics that you could collect yourself just as well if you run the script on your real site ...