
Bitly Goes Beyond Link Shortening, But Users Not Amused - iProject
http://techcrunch.com/2012/05/29/bitly-update-user-reaction/
======
lancefisher
I use bit.ly for shorting links and tracking stats just like the article
mentions. It used to work great for that. Paste a link, :boom: it's shortened,
and I can press a button to copy. The only thing that would make it better is
if I didn't have to click copy afterwards.

Now, I have to click "add bitmark" (and figure out what the heck that is),
paste the link, add an optional note, click save, then click copy before the
flash message goes away. If it does go away, I have to click info, then copy
the link. This is extremely annoying; the first time especially so.

Bit.ly wants to be the new delicious. Fine. Whatever. Just keep the one-step
process for making short URLs. That's why I'm using it in the first place.

~~~
webwanderings
With delicious being totally dead, I think it is worth having at a new
bookmarking service (haven't checked this yet myself).

~~~
mikeryan
Delicious isn't completely dead it's owned by the guys who started YouTube and
turned into something of a pinterest clone (which is kind of where bookmarking
has gone)

~~~
pavedwalden
Yeah, I still use it. After all, I have many years of bookmarks in there. I'm
happy to see it emerging from stasis now that Yahoo has set it free.

------
hexagonal
1.) Screw link shorteners. When they go bankrupt, which they do _frequently,_
they leave behind millions of completely useless URLs.

2.) Antagonizing your userbase seems like an unwise move in a market where
changing providers is so trivially easy. (What's the difference between a
bit.ly link and a t.co one?)

~~~
abcd_f
Do elaborate on the _frequently_ part.

~~~
hexagonal
<http://archiveteam.org/index.php?title=Urlteam>

Defunct URL shorteners:

    
    
        tr.im
        xs.md
        4url.cc
        litturl.com
        chod.sk - Appears non-incremental, not resolving
        gonext.org - not resolving
        ix.it - Not resolving
        jijr.com - Doesn't appear to be a shortener, now parked
        kissa.be - "Kissa.be url shortener service is shutdown"
        kurl.us - Parked.
        miklos.dk - Doesn't appear guessable: http://miklos.dk/!z7bA6a - "Vi arbejder på sagen..."
        minurl.org - Presently in ERROR 404
        muhlink.com - Not resolving
        myurl.us - cpanel frontend
        1link.in - Website dead
        canurl.com - Website dead
        dwarfurl.com - Website dead/Numeric, appears incremental: http://dwarfurl.com/08041
        easyuri.com - Website dead/Appears hex incremental with last digit random/checksum: http://easyuri.com/1339f , http://easyuri.com/133a3
        go2cut.com - Website dead
        lnkurl.com - Website dead
        minilien.com - Doesn't appear guessable: http://minilien.com/?9nyvwnA0gh - Website dead
        memurl.com - Pronounceable. Broken.
        nyturl.com - NY Times (bonus points for being longer than nyt.com, which they own). Taken by squatters
        digg.com - discontinued - [2]
        u.nu - "The shortest URLs. period." Website dead since at least 1st of october 2010 (http://web.archive.org/web/20100104023208/http://u.nu/)

~~~
arctictony
So bit.ly tried to do something about this a while back by helping to found
<http://archive.org/details/301works>

~~~
gaelian
... and then abandoning it? Or am I missing something?

------
sriramk
Here's a question for the HN crowd. When you do a redesign, how do you know
whether it'll play out like the FB newsfeed (1 out of 8 million users joined a
protest group, ultimately one of the best features of the site) or the Digg v4
redesign (users complained, then left).

~~~
revorad
You don't. You just look at the numbers and look for signs of people loving
the change.

~~~
swombat
Exactly. It's ok to lose half your users, if the other half are worth 10x as
much because of the change.

This article describes how Meetup went through this and lost, 95% of their
user activity overnight... and also incidentally became profitable.

[http://37signals.com/svn/posts/2751-scott-heiferman-looks-
ba...](http://37signals.com/svn/posts/2751-scott-heiferman-looks-back-at-
meetups-bet-the-company-moment-)

My comments: <http://swombat.com/2011/1/26/meetup-charging-bet-the-company>

~~~
revorad
Actually, that particular example is the opposite of people loving the change.
If you lose 95% of activity, most people must be hating the change. And it's
not clear that the rest are loving it, unless their activity goes up.

It's easy to judge others without knowing all the facts, but I'll admit I
don't like the way Meetup handled that transition.

Taking away something from users always seems like a bad idea. I prefer to do
it in a way that keeps existing users happy.

Even today, the copy for the organiser fees on Meetup.com is very strange:

========================================

 _Did you know? Organizers pay Organizer Dues. Learn More (link)

Yep, Meetup Group Organizers pay Organizer Dues (as little as $12 a month).
Some Organizers choose to share this cost with their members.

Meetup is the best for organizing real, face-to-face Meetups!_

========================================

Instead of making the user feel good about the purchase, they are making them
begrudgingly pay "dues".

And they hide the pricing info in weird fine print. You don't even know how
much exactly you're paying until after you've set up a group.

I don't know if they've tried it but their business model could be freemium
simply based on the number of members of a meetup group, instead of some other
obscure features.

The way I see the numbers in the SVN post is that they got 5% conversion to
premium, which is fantastic. I'd bet that almost all organisers who stayed had
reasonably large meetup groups. By staying free for small groups, Meetup could
have probably avoided losing 95% of the activity and still stayed profitable,
while accomplishing their stated goal of "Meetups everywhere about most
everything".

It's also funny that they cite Craigslist as an inspiration - a site which is
almost completely free, with a tiny sliver of premium features.

Edit: To add to an already long comment:

Meetup charges a measly $19 per month. My local meditation group of 20 people
collected more than that every week just by asking members _nicely_ to
contribute a dollar each for the tea and biscuits.

I think Meetup is hurting their business and vision by being too small-minded.

~~~
swombat
I didn't say Meetup's users loved the change. In fact, they clearly did hate
it - that's pretty obvious.

My point was that you shouldn't be afraid to do something that 95% of your
users hate if:

a) those users aren't bringing in any revenue and are unlikely to do so ever

b) the other 5% love it and end up giving you much more in return (whether
that's money or other things)

~~~
revorad
Ok, you agreed with my original comment and then gave the example of Meetup,
so I misunderstood.

I disagree with your reasons for making big changes that most of your users
hate, but that's probably because we disagree fundamentally on how to build a
business.

------
kijin
> _"It's the response from the vocal minority who are quick to complain about
> any change."_

Who else will complain about bad changes, if not the "vocal minority"? When
was the last time somebody appealed to the alleged wisdom of the "silent
majority" to support anything worth supporting? Nixon? Falwell?

Internet services rely greatly on word of mouth. You need vocal advocates to
spread the word. If you alienate your most vocal users, even if they're just a
minority, you've effectively dug your own grave.

The world doesn't need another social bookmarking service.

~~~
anamax
> When was the last time somebody appealed to the alleged wisdom of the
> "silent majority" to support anything worth supporting? Nixon? Falwell?

Everyone claims that the silent majority supports their position. See Occupy
for a recent example.

Suggesting that everyone is wrong seems a bit strong.

~~~
kijin
No, I wasn't suggesting that everyone is wrong. Rather, appealing to the
"silent majority" without offering any independent arguments assumes that the
majority must be right, which is just as fallacious as assuming that the
majority must be wrong.

IIRC the Occupy movement didn't argue that the 99% is right because it's the
99%. Rather, the argument was that there are serious socioeconomic problems
that affect as much as 99% of the population. People also tried really hard to
mobilize as many ordinary citizens as possible so that the majority would no
longer be silent. Contrast that with the usual conservative bullshit about how
hard-working citizens are too busy with their own productive lives to
participate in protests, which implies that silence is a virtue.

~~~
anamax
> Rather, the argument was that there are serious socioeconomic problems that
> affect as much as 99% of the population.

Not so fast. Occupy also claims to know something about solutions to those
problems.

> Contrast that with the usual conservative bullshit about how hard-working
> citizens are too busy with their own productive lives to participate in
> protests, which implies that silence is a virtue.

How about a checkable cite to said "bullshit" from an actual conservative?
Citing someone criticizing that stance doesn't count.

------
trustfundbaby
> As Bitly’s CEO Peter Stern told me, the company anticipated the negative
> reaction: “It’s the response from the vocal minority who are quick to
> complain about any change. We put a great deal of thought and effort into
> making the change as minimal as we could, but we recognize that people don’t
> like change.”

How disrespectful.

~~~
fingerprinter
How is this disrespectful?

~~~
Lockyy
Because it's a pre-canned response of someone out of tune saying "they don't
know what they want so it isn't worth listening to them. Just let them
complain till they realise that we were right all along."

------
trustfundbaby
I was so upset when I got to work this morning and found that not only had the
chrome extension changed, the website had changed completely too.

It used to be that I'd click on the chrome extension icon and immediately get
a link along with the page title that I could post straight to twitter or
facebook. The j.mp/bit.ly homepage was bookmarked in my bookmarks bar and
showed me everything I cared about in one place (the link, with another link
to copy it, how many clicks on my link, and how many total clicks to that
particular article).

I imagine they went "hang on, we're making life waaaay too easy for them" and
proceeded to throw up the vomit that is the current homepage. Now to get the
shortened link from the extension, I have to click save and them do some other
nonsense to retrieve my link.

I'm the worst kind of angry about this ... angry and powerless, because bit.ly
is such a part of my online life now (personally and a bunch of apps that I've
written use it) that I simply can't do without it ... there's no other decent
alternatives, plus I have this weird thing where I think its kind of rude to
complain about a free service.

So apart from this, I'm just going to shut up and hope something better comes
along so I can jump ship. It happened with delicious (pinboard), so hopefully,
it won't be long.

~~~
TomAnthony
Genuine question: What would you be looking for in an alternative? What are
the must have features of bit.ly that no other service offers?

I ask because I have to wonder why people are having such a hard time finding
an alternative. I thought there are loads of services out there that did
similar stuff?

~~~
trustfundbaby
I use the j.mp version. its short.

All my stats in one place, viewable by only me.

Google Chrome extension that lets me get the title of a page with a short link
with a click.

Tweetdeck integration

------
systematical
Looks like they changed it back already?

~~~
cocoflunchy
Yeah, I'm not really familiar with bitly, but I tried it to see what it was
all about and I just had to paste the link and hit enter...

~~~
ajanuary
I believe it's only if you're logged in.

------
Kilimanjaro
Bitly grew out of a necessity when twitter was just starting. That need has
been filled by a plethora of options, so what's left?

------
DanielKehoe
I use bitly for links in tweets because I like to gauge the relevance and
usefulness of the tweet by seeing how many people followed the link. The new
Bitly interface is cumbersome and it's no longer easy to read the "statistics"
report. I'd like some suggestions for alternative services.

------
DanielBMarkham
Ye gods! My eyes! My eyes!

Can anybody tell me how to freaking look at the stats for any one link? All I
want is to copy text, copy link, then come back and see if anybody clicked on
it. That's all I want.

~~~
taylorbuley
Just add a "+" to the end of it. For example, <http://tcrn.ch/L265mw+>

------
jsilence
Buy a short domain. Run your own URL-Shortener. It is not that hard and you'll
have complete control over the interface and all the data and most
importantly: the domain.

Remember bit.ly went down because the Libyan government was not amused about
some content? (Not sure whether it was bit.ly, but it was some .ly URL-
shortener).

~~~
chronomex
I believe you are referring to vb.ly.

~~~
jsilence
Yes, thanks.

------
perlpimp
Bitly did the facebook maneuver on their users ;)

Honestly it is a breach of social contract, maybe launching another product
would've been a better solution. I don't use facebook anymore for that reason
interface became kind of irritating. Everytime I intend to popup a chat window
I don't know exactly what to expect.

my 2c

------
rickchendesign
I made my own little url shortener because I think bit.ly is getting too
bloated too. Took me a long time! Appreciate feedback.

<http://weakurl.com>

------
antidoh
This is an example of why link shorteners should be defined within the context
of an RFC, with encoding and decoding handled entirely by the browser or other
client.

------
ZanderEarth32
Glad I moved to Buffer for my link shortening. They also have the best Tweet
scheduling tools I've ever used.

------
jdp23
It looks like the stats on all my older links (everything before April) have
disappeared?

If so, disappointing.

------
CYPHERDSOUL
Bitly is dead, long live goo.gl. +1 for Google.

------
casca
So people are threatening to leave a free service because they're looking for
ways to make it sustainable?

~~~
Karunamon
If by "make it sustainable" you mean completely break the interface. It wasn't
necessary to obscure and make annoying the interface in order to implement the
features they are.

But what the hell do I know, I'm just a "vocal minority" :|

------
h84ru3a
I'll bet she was thinking of the data mining and analysis possibilities opened
up by allowing users to input information in the form of "notes". Of course,
that's just a guess.

