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Get startedBitly is the ultimate platform for link management and URL shortening. Our tool allows users to shorten, customize, track, manage, and share links across channels with ease. Founded in 2008, Bitly.com has become the most widely-used URL shortener globally, with over 1 billion clicks per month. Our tool converts long, complex URLs into short, simple links that are easy to share, remember, and type. Bitly links usually contain 6 alphanumeric characters, making them the perfect solution for all your link management needs.
For example, you can shorten a long URL like "https://goo.by/telegram-url-shortener-bot" to "bit.ly/2AmB37Q".
This makes it easy to share the link on platforms like Twitter or in texts where there are character limits. Beyond just shortening links, Bit.ly also provides advanced link management and analytics capabilities to help businesses, marketers, and content creators optimize their linking strategy.
Bit.ly was founded in 2008 by developers Peter Stern and Kevin Gilbertson as a side project while working at area code social network startup Nambu. They identified a need for an easier way to share links across platforms like Twitter, which had emerged as a rapidly growing network. In 2009, Bitly.com received angel funding from investors like Betaworks and Chris Dixon. It gained significant traction that year after being one of the first URL shorteners integrated natively into Twitter. This helped Bitly become the dominant tool for tweeting links at the time. In 2010, Bitly raised $10 million in Series A funding led by FirstMark Capital and Khosla Ventures. This allowed the company to expand beyond a simple link shortener into a more robust link management platform. Some key events in Bitly growth include:
Today, Bit.ly powers over 1 billion clicks per month and is used by over 500,000 businesses and content creators worldwide. The company continues to enhance its offerings through strategic acquisitions that complement its core URL shortening and analytics capabilities.
Bitly mission is to provide powerful, easy-to-use link tools to help organizations and content creators grow their audience and deeply understand their traffic. The company vision is to become the world leading enterprise link management platform. Beyond just shortening links, Bitly.com aims to offer data-driven link optimization, brand monitoring, and campaign analytics solutions. At its core, Bitly is focused on:
With this strategy focused on enhancing links, Bitly seeks to become an essential link management and analytics solution for businesses, publishers, agencies, and content creators worldwide.
The primary function of Bitly is as a URL shortening and link management tool. It allows you to shorten any long URL into a compact bit.ly link. For example:
Original URL: https://goo.by/telegram-url-shortener-bot Bitly short URL:bit.ly/3SkCjPm
Shortening links via Bitly provides several benefits:
1. Integrates with social media: Shortened Bitly links are optimized for sharing on social networks like Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn etc. where there are character limits.
2. Link branding: Bitly enables customization of link appearance with branded domains, custom slugs etc.
3. Link tracking: Bitly links come with click analytics to see real-time and historical stats.
4. Convenient to share: Short links are easy to communicate via messages, emails, print media etc.
5. Identifiable: The bit.ly domain allows users to immediately recognize a link has been shortened.
6. Link management: Bitly allows organizing, managing and archiving all shortened links from one dashboard.
7. API access: Bitly provides developers an API to programmatically shorten links and integrate with other platforms.
These capabilities around creating shortened links provide the foundation for Bitly platform. The shortened links then unlock additional functionality around analytics, link management, link sharing, and brand customization.
A key benefit of Bitly.com over other URL shorteners is the ability to fully customize shortened links. Users can tailor shortened links for branding purposes, preferred display text, custom domains, and campaign tracking. Some of the key ways to customize Bitly URLs include:
Custom slugs - The 6 character alphanumeric string after bit.ly/ can be customized to a preferred word or phrase:
bit.ly/sampleslug
Branded domains - Links can use branded alternate domains instead of bit.ly:
goo.gl/sampleslug
Custom titles - Choose display text that appears in social media posts instead of copied URLs.
Deep linking - Set deep links to specific app screens or locations within websites.
Campaign tags - Append +campaignName to links to categorize and track them together through analytics.
UTM parameters - Integration with Google Analytics by adding UTM codes to track traffic sources, campaigns etc.
These options for customization and personalization help strengthen brand identity and trackability through links. Businesses can align shortened links with their brand style guide and naming conventions.
Beyond just shortening links, Bitly provides an integrated platform to manage, organize, share, and track all shortened links. Key features of Bitly link management platform include:
With these capabilities, the entire link lifecycle from creation to sharing to archival can be managed seamlessly from Bitly dashboards. This enables streamlined collaboration and governance across organizations.
Beyond its core URL shortener and link management platform, Bitly offers numerous additional features for analytics, engagement, automation, and more.
A major benefit of using Bitly is the powerful real-time analytics it provides for each shortened link. Users can deeply understand how links are performing. Key analytics offered include:
These analytics provide actionable data to identify high-performing links, assess engagement across channels, and optimize content strategy. Users can even set up real-time alerts and notifications based on their key metrics.
Beyond analytics, Bitly also offers robust link tracking capabilities:
These tracking tools provide a 360-degree view of link performance across platforms, whether shared via web pages, emails, social media or QR codes. All activity around links gets consolidated into Bitly analytics.
For high-volume link sharing needs, Bitly provides the ability to shorten multiple links in bulk:
Bulk shortening saves time compared to shortening links one at a time. It enables efficient content production workflows, such as creating multiple social posts, scheduling newsletters, exporting reports etc.
Bitly offers both free and paid plans depending on usage needs.
Here is an overview of Bitly pricing structure:
Bitly also provides volume-based discounts for high click accounts. Non-profits and educational institutions can request discounted access. Overall, Bitly aims to offer capabilities scaled for individual to small business to enterprise use cases under different pricing tiers.
Bitly free plan includes:
The free plan allows anyone to access Bitly core URL shortening and organization features. It provides enough capabilities for personal use or small businesses getting started with Bitly. Downsides of the free plan include no team accounts, more limited analytics, lack of priority support etc. But it serves as a functional entry-level introduction to Bitly platform.
For more advanced use cases, Bitly offers paid Pro and Business plans with added functionality.
Bitly Pro provides features like:
Bitly Business caters to large enterprises with:
Higher-tier plans allow greater collaboration through team accounts, more real-time analytics, customizable integrations and workflows, robust identity management, and tailored customer support. For large companies with unique needs, Bitly also offers fully customized enterprise pricing and solutions beyond the standard plans.
While Bitly serves diverse use cases, it provides particular value for businesses through capabilities tailor-made for marketing, branding, analytics, and more.
For branding and marketing teams, Bitly enables:
Together these features help unify multi-channel branding, facilitate campaign management, and deliver insights to refine strategies using links as a universal conduit.
For social media managers, Bitly offers capabilities to:
These features allow streamlining link-heavy social media workflows. Teams can maintain brand consistency, accelerate content generation, and better track performance.
For large marketing campaigns spanning multiple channels like email, social, display ads, QR codes etc. Bitly offers:
With Bitly, campaigns at any scale can be orchestrated cohesively for consistent branding and simplified analytics.
Beyond core shortening and analytics capabilities, Bitly offers a robust suite of advanced tools for automation, customization, and integrations.
Bitly provides developer APIs and an ecosystems of integrations to extend utility:
Bitly integrations ecosystem streamlines shortening and analytics workflows across a user technology stack - no manual copying and pasting of links required.
For real-time automation, Bitly offers webhooks and deep link analytics:
Webhooks facilitate event-driven link workflows. For example, webhooks can trigger archival of old links that receive no recent clicks. Deep link integrations provide complete visibility into shortened link performance across web and mobile channels.
Bitly can generate QR codes that contain embedded shortened links:
QR codes enable offline and print channels to still leverage Bitly link tracking. This closes the loop between digital and physical media for holistic multi-channel analytics.
Let explore some examples of Bitly being successfully leveraged by major brands and organizations.
Many recognizable businesses use Bitly for core benefits like:
The New York Times - Creates shortened, memorable links for sharing articles on social media.Tracks clicks to understand reader preferences.
Airbnb - Uses custom Airbnb domains instead of bit.ly for branding. Adds UTM tags to measure campaign impact.
Netflix - Tests different text and images when sharing links to see which gain more clicks.
Spotify - Automatically shortens and posts relevant music links to social profiles.Analyzes.
Anheuser-Busch used Bitly to launch a coordinated campaign promoting the 2022 Super Bowl:
Shortened links enabled a streamlined and brand consistent campaign while providing data to optimize strategy in real-time.
Publishing giant Condé Nast leverages Bitly to distribute content:
For Condé Nast, Bitly is essential for efficient content distribution across its profiles and analyzing audience behavior.
HubSpot, a major marketing SaaS company, uses Bitly to:
Bitly powers HubSpot owned media ecosystem, helping them quantify campaign performance.
Bitly aims to provide a seamless user experience for link management across web and mobile.
Bitly dashboard and UX includes:
Overall, ease of use and convenience are prioritized so users can efficiently manage links from a single intuitive platform. Access controls and integrations also facilitate enterprise-wide use.
In addition to its web dashboard, Bitly offers iOS and Android mobile apps that include:
The app extends Bitly utility for users who prefer a mobile-centric link management experience. Core shortening and analytics remains highly accessible on both mobile and desktop.
For SEO professionals and content creators, Bitly provides tools to optimize websites through strategic link practices.
Key intersections between Bitly and SEO include:
Overall Bitly helps streamline technical and strategic link building activities to improve SEO.
One common question around URL shorteners is whether they dilute SEO value by creating an extra link in the chain. However, Bitly uses 301 permanent redirects to properly pass along link equity and ranking signals. Google John Mueller has confirmed that Linkjuice passes through Bitly:
"Using Bitly and other URL shorteners doesn't do anything bad or wrong in our systems. It doesn't pass link signals differently."
So content creators and SEOs can feel comfortable using Bitly without concerns about impacting organic rankings. However, link moderation is still advised to avoid spamming patterns.
Bitly aims to provide competitive benefits and build a strong work culture.
Employees at Bitly enjoy:
Overall Bitly aims to provide work-life balance with competitive pay and a selection of benefits. The teams are distributed but collaborative.
Employees highlight Bitly benefits and positive work culture:
"Bitly has a great mission that employees are driven towards daily. Leadership cares about mental health and supporting employees." "Flexible PTO, great medical benefits, 401k matching, commuter benefits. Management works hard to promote work/life balance." "Amazing collaborative supportive place to work filled with extremely smart people."
By investing in strong benefits and culture, Bitly aims to empower employees to produce their best work. The fast-paced but supporting environment facilitates growth.
Bitly continues to evolve its product offerings to further its vision as a leader in enterprise link management.
Founder and CEO Mark Josephson outlines Bitly vision:
"Our goal is to provide a universal link management platform that brings together enterprise-scale link intelligence, audience engagement, security and governance."
Key elements of this long-term vision include:
Bitly aims to continuously expand its platform scope to eventually become the analytics and infrastructure backbone for all organizational link needs.
To achieve this vision, Bitly is investing in:
Ongoing product R&D will focus on enhanced analytics, safety, personalization, and seamless integration to provide greater value to users.
Bitly cultivates an active user community while also providing responsive support.
Bitly fosters a community that shares tips and experiences via:
Engaging with Bitly users allows the company to continuously educate on link best practices while also improving their platform.
For direct assistance, Bitly offers:
Bitly aims to provide omni-channel self-service and personalized support tailored to each customer needs. Their growing knowledge base and community also supplement direct assistance.
Ready to start shortening, managing, and tracking links with Bitly? Here are tips to get started:
Getting started with Bitly just takes a few steps:
Once logged in, you'll be taken to Bitly link management dashboard to begin shortening your first links!
To shorten your first link with Bitly:
Repeat the process to continue shortening additional links as needed for sharing, tracking, and analytics!
With character limits and link unfurling, Bitly provides important benefits for social media marketing.
On Twitter, Bitly:
For Twitter users, these capabilities help increase engagement, streamline workflows, and provide richer analytics.
Similarly on Instagram, Bitly:
Together this allows Instagram users to drive more link clicks and gain actionable analytics otherwise not available in-app.
In summary, key benefits of using Bitly include:
Bitly provides a wide range of capabilities allowing anyone from individual users to large enterprises to get the most out of their links.
Bitly URL Shortener has provided a comprehensive platform for over 10 years, empowering users to maximize their link building, sharing, and tracking for free. Our robust toolkit positions us as a leader in link management innovation. Our vision is to provide enterprise-scale link intelligence and workflows. Our capabilities can benefit social media managers, digital marketers, content creators, and SEO experts. Simplify, customize, and optimize your linking with the established leader Bitly!