Bye Bye Bit.ly - 7 Reasons Why Goo.gl Will Kill Bit.ly

Both Google and Facebook announced today that they are launching url shorteners. They are entering the space that Bit.ly has owned as of late, stealing traffic and mindshare from sites like tiny.url and bud.url. Bit.ly saw an incredible increase in traffic and usage due to their infiltration of twitter applications.












(source: Mashable)

While some believe Bit.ly's ace in the hole is that they are already embedded in many twitter applications, Google has a significant chance to steal those partnerships for many reasons.

1. If there's anyone that can convince CoTweet, TweetDeck, Tweetie, Hootsuite, Brizzly, et al to switch their default shortener, it's Google
2. One of Bitly's best options for sending url's to Twitter is their Bookmarklet. Goo.gl is going to be installed first on the Toolbar. If you don't want the toolbar, a Bookmarklet will probably be created shortly thereafter
3. Feedburner will replace TwitterFeed because TwitterFeed is mortally flawed due to their initial OpenID requirements (pre-Google and Yahoo integrations)
4. Why would choose to work with a site like Bit.ly over a company like Google?
5. Integration with Google News, Google Reader and iGoogle
6. Google might even be able to appease the Murdoch's of the world by integrating with major publishers allow easy dissemination of original content and point to the genesis instead of an aggregator
7. Bit.lys stats are nice but how can Analytics not do a better job. Comparing links month to month? Overall monthly statistics? These are things Marketing, PR and Advertising firms would actually be willing to pay big bucks for
   

The winner in this race will be the company that has the most mindshare, the most visitors
for news destinations, better word of mouth, better analytics, better speed, better security, authenticity, and a better reputation.

All of these ingredients create a perfect storm for Bit.ly. I don't think fb.me will win this battle because Facebook is not a news filter or destination like Twitter is. However, having a bookmarklet which would allow Facebook users to shorten links and send them to Facebook will give them a great headstart considering their 350 million person population.

Google, however, has a far bigger footprint and much more of a wide array of uses. From GMail to Toolbar to Reader and iGoogle, to YouTube, Orkut, Android, Chrome, Chrome OS and even Wave, Google will be able to leverage their shortener to provide incredible analytics and distribution much better than any of the other competitors. Add in the fact that Google could just as easily decide to buy a Hootsuite, TweetDeck, Tweetie or CoTweet and their potential goes even higher. Don't forget that those sites could be leveraged for advertising, unlike Google.com.

Many of the good twitter applications are becoming web-based instead of desktop applications. These applications are making money with ads. Is Twitter? The future of twitter does not mean revenue for twitter, it means revenue for the apps that manage your accounts that have advertising.

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