Some users may have noticed that yesterday we rolled out some upgrades to the bit.ly history system.  In addition to being significantly faster, it allows for some additional features we think you’ll enjoy. 

One of the first things you may notice is the addition of an edit button next to titles in your history display.  This allows you to personalize the title for any link you’ve shortened.  Any changes you make will only appear in your history listing, so feel free to change titles to anything you like in order to make them more recognizable and personally useful.

Another change is that custom names (keywords) are now displayed along side the history entry.  This means you won’t have to do any extra work to remember which bit.ly custom name points to which bit.ly short url when you want to look at your statistics.

It’s worth noting that this history system works a bit differently than the old system.  Under the old system, if you shortened the same URL multiple times, we would simply move your old entry to the top of the list chronologically (we would never allow multiple history entries for the same link).  The new system acts a bit more like an event log (or your browser history) in that shortening the same URL multiple times will result in multiple history entries which will remain in their original chronological order unless you decide to delete them from your history.  You’ll always receive the same short URL for any long URL you shorten however.  There are a few places, such as custom name creation and certain sidebar/sharing uses which currently create multiple history entries for things that are really a single shortening even.  We’ll be working out those kinks over the next day or so, so please be patient.

The new history system that’s just been rolled out will allow us to continue to add some interesting and useful features in the coming weeks, so as always, stay tuned.

Update: bit.ly no longer offers the file upload functionality described below.

On another note, a few weeks ago we added the ability to upload and post media files directly through the bit.ly interface without having to leave the site.  Based on user feedback, we’ve upgraded the interface in order to make it easier to upload both photos and videos.  To use this new feature, simply click on “Share a File” in the bit.ly URL shortening bar.  Your file will automatically be turned into a bit.ly link, complete with all the tracking you’re used to receiving from your other bit.ly links.

A few weeks ago on the bit.ly blog, we commented on our appreciation for short, concise domain names.  While the bit.ly domain is almost as short as it gets, for some people, every character counts. With that in mind, today we’re announcing j.mp, powered by the bit.ly platform.

j.mp has the same short URLs, metrics, history, user accounts (you’ll have to login again, but your bit.ly accounts will carry over), and customization you’ve come to enjoy on bit.ly, all on a short, memorable domain.  In fact, any bit.ly URL also works as a j.mp URL.

You’re welcome to continue to use bit.ly, as it’s not going anywhere.  But if you desperately need those two additional free characters in order to make your point, feel free to use j.mp instead.

The best thing about an open API is that people can surprise you with great new ways to use your service.  That’s definitely been the case here at bit.ly. We’ve been hard at work on new features that we hope to launch in the next few weeks, but in the meantime, we thought it might be helpful to share some of the things other that other sites have done using our  API.

Just over the last few weeks, we’ve seen several cool new integrations:

• Google Reader included us in their new “send-to” feature, which lets you share any post on Twitter, automatically shortening long URLs with bit.ly.

• Typepad added a feature that automatically generates bit.ly links on Twitter for new blog posts. In the new TypePad Beta, bit.ly statistics are integrated right into the Typepad dashboard. This feature will be rolled out to all TypePad users later this fall.

• CBS started using “cbs.bit.ly” for news and video content, improving the transparency of the underlying long url while retaining bit.ly utilities, like the ability to add a “+” sign to the end of any short link.

• John Resig of Mozilla used the bit.ly API to build an easy “retweet” button — http://bit.ly/1LF7Tv

We’re excited about these integrations, and we’d love to see more like them. All the necessary functionality is available to any publisher via the bit.ly sharing “chicklet” (http://bit.ly/1655YE) and in the free public API. 

As for the upcoming features that we’re working on… we’re pleased to announce that one is them is a new way to use bit.ly. In partnership with yfrog, we’ll be rolling out a shortcut to let you upload and share photos from the bit.ly homepage. Bit.ly links will also be available for all yfrog images.

We should have this done in the next week or two — stay tuned for more details, and for the second annual bit.ly API contest!

We’ll be conducting some database maintenance overnight from 1-3AM Eastern time in order to increase capacity for some of our systems as we continue to grow.

During this period of time, all existing links will continue to redirect.  However, you will be temporarily unable to shorten new URLs, or view your metrics.  Once the work has been completed, all services will be restored.

We apologize for the inconvenience, but this should result in a smoother user experience going forward.

Sad day yesterday to see tr.im announce that they are shutting their doors, after failing to make a business of a nice service with a great URL. The bit.ly team suspected something was wrong over there — we’d seen some tweets about down times — but we had no contact or outreach from the Nambu/tr.im team till we emailed them last night.

The permanence of the URL mappings is an important piece of the now web/twitter ecosystem.  Joshu wrote this up in a typical succinct piece earlier this year.   At bit.ly we have built a redundant system (see other blog posts for background: http://bit.ly/89kbD ).  This redundancy, along with with the logical separation of our systems and multiple backups of our mappings, makes us feel fairly comfortable about the permanence of our URLs. But it doesn’t address the heart of Josh’s issue — he was talking about the industry as a whole, not any one service.

Back in April, we reached out to several of the leading URL shortening services to suggest a wayback machine-like approach to archiving the mappings of the URLs.  The idea was simple.  Each week bit.ly and other participating shorteners would bulk upload URL mappings to a separate service — allowing users access to the mappings in case an individual shortener went down. We registered 301works.com (and .org) for this service.  We thought this was a useful idea — something that was inexpensive to execute and important for the industry.     That said;  tr.im along with other services said no thank you.  There are some privacy issues that make this approach potentially problematic — namely participating services need to assert the public nature of the URL mappings.  If I send you a private short link to a map that shows where a treasure box is hidden in my back garden, that is a link you don’t want made public.  I reached out to Eric at tr.im yesterday after hearing of the announcement and offered to host the URL mappings in perpetuity.   He doesnt see the need for this right now — his interest is in selling tr.im.  

tr.im potentially shutting down makes the need for something like 301works even more pressing.  This isn’t hard to do — the archive could be hosted on amazon. In 2009, a service like this could be spun up and off and running in weeks.  We contacted several people again about 301works yesterday — we will post updates here as they develop.  I suspect that a reason for the reluctance to join up with 301works back in April was that a competitor was reaching out asking about this.   We have reached out to some friends who run a non-profit whose mission is related to this — hopefully they or someone else in the industry can help/assume leadership here.   Our intent is to help the industry as a whole.   Redirect tables in their simplest form have limitations — but the internet has shown that a little bit of redundancy can go a long way.

Two last, related points here.   tr.im has a great URL — it’s clear and short — if someone buys it and wants to use our infrastructure to drive it (and 301works to back it up), please contact us on this blog or by email (we offered this to tr.im as well).  And while we love the bit.ly brand, we recognize it could be a character shorter.  We will follow up on this shortly. Thanks as ever for using bit.ly — this stuff is important.

-JohnB-

bit.ly will be conducting database maintenance for approximately one hour on Sunday at 4AM Eastern. During the maintenance window, the website and API will be inaccessible. Existing links will continue to function normally.

We’ve received tons of great feedback over the last few days about bit.ly’s new ‘bento box’ user interface, and we really appreciate hearing what all of you think. We’ve made a few changes in response -

• Many of you wanted back the ability to add a custom name for a shortened URL regardless of whether or not you are logged in, and now that box is always present.
• The “Options” box will now stay visible until you hide it again, even if you navigate away from the page.
• We improved automatic placing of the cursor and clearing of the text in the Share box.
• Some of you were having trouble with the delete button in the history view, and that should now be working again.
• We made several other small UI tweaks and bug fixes.

Thanks again for letting us know what you think, and keep enjoying bit.ly!

A few minutes ago we went live with a new version of the main bit.ly page. Our lead designer Neil Wehrle has been working on the design for a while, and we’re excited to finally have it out.

We’ve internally nicknamed the new design ‘bento box’ after the divided containers in which Japanese food is often served. Bento improves the graphic differentiation between the page’s primary use-cases: shortening links, adding custom names to your links, posting to Twitter, and shortening another URL when you’re done. We hope you find the new design more intuitive, and we would love to hear your feedback on our UserVoice forums.

There are also a few other small changes, including the ability to specify a default Twitter account for use when posting from the main page. Enjoy!