The following week, Trim announces it will be reopening its doors indefinitely, restoring service to both existing Trim links and the core of the site that lets users make new ones. The URL shortener assured the public that this fiasco was not a publicity stunt. There was a lot going on in this ever-emerging URL Shortening industry. One other notable event in 2009, was the new Goo.gl service’s ‘direct attack on Bit.ly‘. Google’s goal was twofold: to solve an internal problem with people sharing links for things like Google Maps and other Google tools, and to capture market share from Bitly to encourage more users of their web browser, email services, search engine, and all the other stuff they offer.
And while Google moved into the URL shortening space to capture free users, Bitly began partnering with major websites and publishers, including Microsoft‘s Bing search engine, The New York Times, The Huffington Post, The Wall Street Journal, The Onion and others… And Google had (and has) no interest in competing in this space. [UPDATE – April 24, 2018: Google is currently winding down its Goo.gl URL shortening service. You can Cork House Clearance Services check out its statement here.] Bitly Introduces Branded Short Domains Bitly Dashboard Branded Domains Bitly Dashboard circa 2012 Credit: Hifi Social Web In January 2010, Bit.ly launched Branded Short Domains, giving brands the ability to control their brand and capture their data by replacing the “Bit.ly” in their Bitlinks with their own custom domains. Although it wasn’t the simplest process, especially for non-techies,
It was still an important milestone for the URL shorteners evolution (and a founding principle of our company). From there, Bitly continued to grow (thanks to exposure and traffic from Twitter of course), and in April 2010, Bit.ly launched its Bitly Brand Tools (formerly known as Bitly Enterprise). Bitly Enterprise Dashboard in 2010: Bit.ly Dashboard 2010 Credit: VentureBeat Now you could shorten, brand and track your links, monitor them on your multiple channels and start to optimize your marketing efforts with valuable data. URL Shorteners Start to Move from Being a Useful Link Shortening Tool into a Link Branding Tool. By 2010, the URL Shortener industry had become competitive.