Tiny Bit Me: The Long and Short of URL Shorteners
A long long time ago, a friend of mine asked me how Twitter plans to make money, he was pursuing a similar idea and even then it wasn’t completely difficult to make your own Twitter clone. Many months have passed since and some one asked me why are there so many URL shorteners. For lack of better wisdom he decided that there is lots of money in it and therefore so many players. That was just his view though and not very credible, however the larger more wiser online world hold two sets of opinions – that URL shorteners are bad and the other that they are useful.
The Short URL Market
At last count I knew of 18 URL shorteners, and there could definitely be more, another buddy of mine made one last week just for the kicks. That’s a very competitive market we are looking at for a product that not many have scripted a scalable business model yet. TinyURL and Bit.ly hold the largest share of this market followed closely by Cli.gs, at least as per US traffic data which is what most business are concerned with anyway. Bit.ly in fact is surging ahead and it recently saw a 90+ percent growth in usage, this has been the case since Twitter dropped TinyURL as its default service and began using Bit.ly as its replacement. It now has more visitors than TinyURL making it the biggest short URL service.
Source:Mashable
The other important names in this segment are is.gd, tr.im, snurl, kl.am, snipurl, ff.im, ow.ly, adjix. Then there are shorteners of apps like Stumble upon, Digg, Wordpress, Posterous – Su.Pr, Diggbar, Wp.me and Post.ly. And today Tweetmeme, the Twitter Link Tracker announced the launch of rep.ly a short URL service to track URLs in the comment system it launched a couple of weeks back. And in all probability it won’t be the last either. They had also introduced Retwt.me earlier in August as another shortening service.
Danny Sullivan has a huge and comprehensive post on which URL shortener should you use though it needs to be updated considering some latest news in the niche. And it is a must read for anyone tracking this space (you probably might have already for all we know).
The Business Model
While there is no structured product or service selling yet, and almost all of the services are free as far as I am aware, it is not completely a blind race for userbase. Some of them do have an eye of providing premium services or product using the data they partially or completely own. The Advertising model isn’t something a lot of them are banking on though which coming to think of it is quite obvious. Though that doesn’t stop a lot of them having text links embeded on their websites.
The most anticipated model for monetization is analytics and related services that players like Bit.ly already seem to be building. TinyURL on the other hand has a donation box to keep itself free. However, the business models that these shorteners both new and old can work on are essentially based on the technology that they bring to the picture in terms of how the URLs are to be displayed.
Since URL shortening is essentially a redirect service there are two basic premises of displaying the shortened URL. One being a straightforward 301 or a similar redirect, and used by services such as Bit.ly and TinyURL and those who then bank on Value Services or advertisements through their site. 301 redirect is the most common form of redirecting and is the most recommended form of shortening by SEOs.
The Second is the kind that caused a furor like Digg did when it brought in its controversial Diggbar, that of cloaked redirecting and the use of frames. Here many sites bank on advertising as their primary source of revenue with ads being displayed on the top frame or showing ads while the URL is being redirected. Linkbee for instance follows both these forms in its advertising with a revenue share with users who use their service.
The third form which is sort of a mix of the above two models is that of providing the technology. I will talk about this form right at the end of this post. Before that however, we need to look at why and why not should we indulge in URL shortening.
The Good boy that Shortener is
The Web is made of links for links, linking is what defines the Internet in many ways. Given that reason alone, URL shorteners have a sustainable future as a service. How business worthy or mission critical is the question that begs for answers. With an ever growing habit of sharing links with the growth of social media one can conclude without much embarrassment that even finding a business worthy value wouldn’t be impossible for such services. So webwise short do make URLs are good.
That apart they linking easier and more holistic given the variety of web services these days. That perhaps is the reason why we saw such a big hoopla around Facebook Vanity URLs. In many ways it was Facebook’s own version of URL shortening compared to its previous URLs. It just shows the need for cleaner and shorter links. I use a shortener to share a Google form with my customers which otherwise would have been a pretty difficult task.
Goodbye Shortner
The pitfalls of shorteners are quite a few as well, many advocates of the stance against shortneres maintain that these systems corrupt the web. From being carriers of spam and malware, to drinking up Google juice the points have been many against shorteners. The biggest risk is that of leaving a host of broken links on its way like the shut down of Tr.im warned before it was saved. And that is a very big risk web 2.0 which is built of on sharing of links faces in general.
SEOMoz has a comprehensive post on the good and the bad points of individual URL shorteners which is another good read on this topic.
So Where are Shorteners Headed
An important point that the adversaries of short URLs point is the need for applications to develop their own shortening systems. Like how popular blog Kotke suggested:
With respect to Twitter, I would like to see two things happen:
1) That they automatically unshorten all URLs except when the 140 character limit is necessary in SMS messages.
2) In cases where shortening is necessary, Twitter should automatically use a shortener of their own.
That way, users know what they’re getting and as long as Twitter is around, those links stay alive.
This is a point that has echoed a lot, and Dave Winer explains it in depth here. The premise works on the basis that a shortened url should point back to the software that gave the URL, so the shortened link will be exactly as long-lived as the thing it’s pointing to. This is why Wordpress launched its own URL shortener WP.me, and this is a point being followed by sharing services like Stumble, Digg and Posterous with their respective shorteners and bookmarklets. They use short URLs as the gimmick to share easily and thereby get more traffic on to their respective sites. Brinkster a web hosting provider also launched its own variant of a shortener to provide better analytics to their customers through it called Bur.st. This validates that the use of short urls won’t be limited to services in social media.
And this is where the third business model comes in, that of enabling others to develop their own short URL systems and providing value adds to make it premium. Cli.gs for instance follows this exact model by offering White Labeled services along with analytics and the works to go with it. And I see a lot of potential in this.
On one hand I think there isn’t much scope for Short URL s to make a considerable business impact, and given the dominance of Google and therefore URL structures that follow what appeases it better, short URLs aren’t the best publisher options either. There business value lies in bigger solutions offering them as a premier value add to existing services. Maybe Twitter should take Bit.ly, Wordpress.com has Wp.me and similarly others will have their own using services of apps like Cli.gs perhaps and that’s the business model that suits to my mind the most for these tools. Either get acquired or provide business solutions to those who can make the most of it. Google for instance, has been recommended by countless bloggers (experts?) to use a short URL for their services like maps, forms, etc. And as more players enter the social web and sharing becomes ubiquitous with the online life (which it probably is already to a large extent).
Under such a situation added to many players try and develop their own unique functionality and we are looking at the prospect of consolidation in the field. As obvious as it is in a fast crowding market the important point will be how the consolidation takes place and who will take over whom. Cash wise and perhaps even reach wise Bit.ly seems a safe bet to lead the pack considering its funding and Twitter’s preference for it. However, it won’t be an easy fight and then again there is the possibility of acquisition by bigger names here.
The shorter the links get the larger the link economy seems to grow and with multiple sources of traffic growing and merging for publishers and users it presents a very interesting marketplace to spend time in.
It was also interesting to see this when I was searching for stuff to write on this post. The defunct now back again Tr.im gave an interesting site for us web marketers to see. Here is a screenshot.
Trim Ad
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I see a lot of Future in this market but for only those services which got it Right. BTW even i launched my own URL Redirection Service = http://hop.im
Great article.
Be decided to create a good looking URL shortner at Tweeturly.com
Main reason we create Tweeturly.com is for SEO purposes.
Still not sure how we are going to make any money with our site yet.
You mentioned Linkbee… by far the best tracking solution around.
Thanks for the post. It has a lot of great information.
You’re forgetting one URL shortener, http://0sp.in They also do the coveted email shortening. Good stuff.