Bitly Goes Beyond Link Shortening, But Users Not Amused | Hacker News Reader

Bitly Goes Beyond Link Shortening, But Users Not Amused

techcrunch.com

65 pointsiProject56 comments

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.

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

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)

The original delicious is completely dead for sure.

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.

I still use it too. I like it, but it seems to be down 1 out of 3 times I try to use it, so let's just say it's 33% dead.

There are other services - like http://pinboard.in which serve the same purpose.

https://kippt.com/ http://pinboard.in/

I don't understand, there is a clearly visible text input field down the page, where you insert a long URL, press enter/click, and out comes a shortlink. What's wrong? Just ignore the sign-in buttons.

(checked only 2 hours after this post)

You should check out weakurl. I wrote it last night!

http://weakurl.com

Rick

For how many years do you intend to keep that up? You might as well call it deadurl.com

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?)

Do elaborate on the frequently part.

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/)

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

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

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).

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

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...

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

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.

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)

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.

The ideal way to change is iteratively otherwise you create a usability problem for your experienced users, which is why you get those revolts. As far as I understand it, FB enhanced their service, whereas Digg reinvented itself, which is a lot more risky.

It's not that hard:

- Put yourself in the user's shoes

- Ask yourself whether your design is consistent with what we know about social science

If you do those two things you'll get it right 99% of the time.

First you need to understand how your users use your existing site. Bit.ly, for example, didn't do that - to assume that someone who plugs in a string of text to get a shorter one would be interested in a social overlay on top of that is retarded. That's similar to turning a photo blogging site into an e-com poster outlet. Sure there's an overlap, but the change is effectively a gamble.

> "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.

> 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.

Remember the 90-9-1 rule, most of your users are likely to be "lurkers". I'd class a website differently than a political movement..

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.

> 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.

> 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.

How is this disrespectful?

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."

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.

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?

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

Looks like they changed it back already?

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...

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

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?

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.

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.

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

Click on the "i" icon for each link.

http://i.imgur.com/GuOxN.jpg

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).

I believe you are referring to vb.ly.

Yes, thanks.

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

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

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.

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

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

If so, disappointing.

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

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

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" :|

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.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com