I'm not sure about bit.ly specifically, but there is the hope that the data about what is trending could be valuable if sold. They know, for instance, what urls people are sharing, and they know how many people are clicking on them.
Who's interested in buying this data? Could you point me to some companies? It'd be helpful as I'm working on an analytics app, sort of.
Companies like Demand Media might be interested...they'd need to know what people are talking about right now so they can create content for it.
Correct. The top tier accounts are $995/month and one of the nifty features are the custom domain short names which, I suppose, provide some nice branding (e.g. amazon.com becomes amzn.to/2U08Yn). The analytics tools are probably also of some value.
Could anyone from bit.ly comment on if this is really enough to keep them in the black? I'm not entirely convinced there would be enough demand. I'm not entirely qualified to comment though either so...