Bitly has just rolled out a brand new mobile site, to allow tablet and smartphone users to shorten, share and track links on the go. The HTML5 optimized version of Bitly’s webite is cross-platform so it works on a variety of devices, including the iPad, iPhone and Android devices. As we heard from Bitly CEO John Borthwick recently, Bitly saw a massive 7 billion clicks on its links last month alone.
Similar to Bit.ly’s web site, you can shorten, share and track links. But the mobile site includes a number of mobile-centric features that make the site easier to use. For example, if you shorten a link while your phone isn’t connected to the internet, Bitly will save the link and shorten it when you have internet connectivity.
Actually clicking on a link is different on a mobile phone or tablet from a computers, so Bitly allows you to hold down any link in your history and open it in a new window or simply click to copy the URL and paste it in a browser. In your Bitly history, up to 100 recent links are cached on your phone, so you can access your bitly links even if you aren’t connected to the Internet.
Another useful feature, is the ability to preview the contents of any Bitly link, including videos. In terms of analytics for Bitly links, the startup is using HTML5 to render graphs and charts, and you can also access a QR code for any bitly link.
While some users might not visit Bit.ly on their mobile phones, I can imagine that the mobile site will get more traffic and usage from tablet devices like the iPad, which is built for browsing.
Bitly just raised $9 million in funding and continues to grow despite competition from Facebook and Twitter. And the company leveraging the massive amount of data on its link sharing network to launch new services, including News.me.
