Bit.ly staff
may be forgiven for thinking Christmas was canceled this year as the
two big boys in town, Facebook and Google, launch their own URL
shortening services.
The rise of Twitter and it's 140
character limit has also seen a rise in shortening services.
Tinyurl.com was the first popular URL shortener, however it was
overtaken by Bit.ly which is now the default service in many Twitter
clients and on the website itself.
Facebook and Google have now jumped into the act with
fb.me and
goo.gl.
Facebook's play is intgrated into it's offering with
Inside Facebook
reporting that currently it only appears to be shortening URLs in it's
mobile interface. The fb.me URL also appears to be a replacement
facebook.com when typing in vanity URLs.
For instance Digital Media's Facebook page can be reached at
http://fb.me/digitmedia.
The fb.me URL shortening is also appears to be automatically used for
users and brands who have set up their Facebook account to post to
Twitter.
Whilst
Facebook's URL shortening is a little limited, Google has bigger plans
with a URL shortener linked to both Feedburner and the Google Toolb.
Google
is looking to position its service to allay some of the fears
surrounding some URL shorteners. Some leading services such as cli.gs
and tr.im often experiencing downtime or even
threatening to shut down altogether, taking existing short links with them.
In
a blog post announcing the service Google addressed these concerns:
- Stability: Google's scalable, multi-datacenter infrastructure provides great uptime and a reliable service to our users.
- Security:
As we do with web search, shortened URLs are automatically checked to
detect sites that may be malicious and warn users when the short URL
resolves to such sites.
- Speed: At Google we like fast products
and we've worked hard to ensure this service is quick. We'll continue
to iterate and improve the speed of Google Url Shortener.
However
like fb.me, goo.gl isn't available as a standalone service as yet, so
Bit.ly can relax for now. However like any online company, they should
be very wary when Google comes knocking in their neighborhood.
