Bit.ly Analytics: From First to Obsolete?
The Need for Twitter Analytics
Once the social sharing platform began to hold interest for initial, brave online business marketers, the industry realized that it was necessary to provide clients with data to justify the time and energy being spent on Twitter. For some time this was an unfulfilled need; then along came bit.ly – the answer to the need for Twitter metrics.
Bit.ly pioneered tracking for social interaction and link sharing on the growing social media sharing platform called Twitter. Several companies have since popped up with similar tracking and reporting abilities, but bit.ly was one of the first and has been used by default on Twitter since 2009 (when it replaced Tiny.url.)
The way this technology works is that it creates a shortened link from your full URL (which is extremely helpful when you only have 140 characters to work with in the first place) and tracks how often that link is clicked or shared. This service is free and you can then look at a report that explains the amount of traffic being received from Twitter to your website and how many times each of your links were clicked and sent people to your content (or your website.)
Bit.ly‘s service has been promoting Twitter by displaying its social marketing power ever since — and for FREE! But now, Twitter has decided to get onboard and it’s new shortener (t.co) will re-shorten all links (including the ones used with bit.ly) in order to provide its own tracking dashboard.
Twitter Web Analytics, according to Christopher Golda, will provide three key benefits that include tracking sharing from your website across the Twitter network, tracking inbound links to your site from Twitter, and the effectiveness of your Twitter integration.
What does that spell out for Bit.ly?
In my opinion, users will no longer continue to use other URL shortening sites when they will be modified by Twitter’s t.co system either way and will already be tracked by Twitter.
I appreciate all the hard work you did, Bit.ly, to get this social media giant to recognize the need for analyzing it’s ability to meet our online marketing goals, and it’s unfortunate that your insight is leading to your own services becoming obsolete. (Of course, once you and those like you have fallen by the wayside, Twitter will probably decide to begin charging for the service!)