Aug 17 2008
bit.ly missing the boat?
Just a quick thought on bit.ly, the new URL shortener that everyone is talking about. Why are they talking about it? Well, it adds features on to URL shortening that you never knew you needed. Like semantic web analysis.
But isn’t that a job for search engines? Why would you want semantic web analysis just on the few URLs that users have shortened?
Here’s what a URL shortener should really do: become a bookmarking site like delicious. Why? Because if a user is already on your site, entering a URL for shortening, it would be a simple matter to also let him add a few tags and a description and save it as a bookmark. I mean, while he’s there.
What does this have to do with newspapers? Not much, except that it illustrates an important principle: leverage what you already do.
One Response to “bit.ly missing the boat?”
Additional comments powered by BackType
[...] the full text of the pages you bookmark so you can search through that text. Yesterday I did a post about bit.ly and I talked about how these new URL shortening sites that are springing up should get into social [...]