What Bit.ly Knows About The Realtime Web

Today during Web 2.0 Expo in San Francisco, Hilary Mason, Bit.ly’s lead data scientist took the stage and offered up some interesting data about the service. Her focus was what our data usage says about the realtime web.

Below, I’ll paste all the slides, but here are some of the key data points she gave:

• In the 9 minutes of this presentation, there will be 284,722 new bit.ly links created
• During that same time, there will be over a million clicks on those links
• No single data source that is more than a single percentage point (meaning, Twitter and doesn’t dominate)
• 28% of Bit.ly links are about tech news
• 10% are about business news
• 15% are about entertainment
• And .3% (yes, point 3) are about the weather — that’s consistent despite growth
• During the recent Iceland volcano, there were 18,000 unique documents sent through Bit.ly at the peak
• But rather than the links falling to nothing, volcano information kept coming — just slightly different. Safety tips, for example.
• Bit.ly data also tells us information about location — Washington DC appears to be more about business while New York City is more about partying.
• 9.8% of traffic through Bit.ly is now coming from mobile devices
• This is trending up quickly — especially thanks to the iPad.

Crunchbase

• BITLY

Company: bitly

Website: bit.ly

Launch Date: 2008

Funding: $30M

bit.ly allows users to shorten, share, and track links (URLs). Reducing the URL length makes sharing easier. bit.ly can be accessed through our website, bookmarklets and a robust and open API. bit.ly is also integrated into several popular third-party tools such as Tweetdeck. A more full list of third party tools can be found on the bit.ly blog. Unique user-level and aggregate links are created, allowing users to view complete, real-time traffic and referrer data, as well as location...

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