As we expected, the new “like” functionality in Google Reader seems like it’s seeing some good usage. Certainly, given that “likes” are fully public, we’re seeing much more social activity on feed items than previously with Google Reader’s “share” or “share with note” functionality. And that’s good. In a world of Twitter, FriendFeed and Facebook, where social sharing is very easy, Google Reader… → Read More
Since it became the default URL shortener for Twitter, Bit.ly has been growing like crazy. And as we learned from Spider-Man, with great power, comes great responsibility.
Bit.ly has started warning users of potentially malicious sites, based on information it has about URLs being shortened. For example, if you click on this link, you’ll see the message that reads, “Warning – this site has been… → Read More
Su.pr, StumbleUpon’s URL shortening service, has come out of closed beta. StumbleUpon, which was recently freed from eBay’s clutches, tossed its hat in the URL shortening ring earlier this year. We first heard about Su.pr in March when StumbleUpon CEO Garrett Camp Tweeted about it. Su.pr, like other shortening tools, lets you shorten a URL and share it across Twitter, Facebook, and… → Read More
URL shortener and analytics service Bit.ly has been working on a new set of products, being referred to as “Bit.ly Now” internally, which will define the next stage of the company’s growth. The company confirmed these plans to us today. The services will include both a destination website as well as a distributed service via expansions to the Bit.ly API.
The core Bit.ly service, which lets users… → Read More
Famous angel investor Ron Conway’s investment focus on real time startups earned him the moniker “Real Time Ron” by his close friends. But he’s certainly not the only venture capitalist out there focusing on this space.
New York based betaworks, an incubator/VC, is also right in the thick of things. They invested early in Summize and gained a sizable chunk of Twitter stock when that company was … → Read More
Once again, the Internet is shifting before our eyes. Information is increasingly being distributed and presented in real-time streams instead of dedicated Web pages. The shift is palpable, even if it is only in its early stages. Web companies large and small are embracing this stream. It is not just Twitter. It is Facebook and Friendfeed and AOL and Digg and Tweetdeck and Seesmic Desktop and… → Read More
Well, that was fast. No more than a day or two after Twitter switched over to bit.ly as its default link shortener (from TinyURL), bit.ly is now the most popular URL shortening service. According to statistics published by Tweetmeme, bit.ly now accounts for 46 percent of all the short URLs on Twitter over the past 24 hours, while TinyURL’s share is down to 43 percent. Just over a month ago… → Read More
Sharing links on Twitter can be quite a pain when you need to input a web address that consumes most of the space you have at your disposal for your micro-message. The startup realized that quickly and automatically started shortening long URLs to make its users save on space for their 140-character updates.
To get this implemented, Twitter went with TinyURL, a service that shortens URLs down… → Read More
Letting people know what music you are listening to has long been a staple of the web. The blogging platform LiveJournal has long had the “listening to” field, instant messaging clients like iChat and Google Talk added the ability to update your status based on the song you were listening to a few years ago, and now people are using Twitter to send our their music selections. Blip.fm is the best… → Read More
One of the most viral activities on the Web is sharing links. It is fast and easy, and a good way to communicate ideas. What started out as something people did via e-mail and bookmark-sharing services like Delicious, is now moving to Facebook, Twitter, and other social broadcasting services. It is just so much more efficient to share a link once with all your friends and followers than to send… → Read More
In a world where everything is being jammed into 140 characters or less, shorter is better. That goes double (or is it half?) for lengthy URLs. So-called URL shortening services are increasingly becoming indispensable to anyone who uses Twitter. It is the only practical way to share links on the service.
Today, one of these URL shortening services, bit.ly, raised $2 million, sparking the… → Read More
A super-secret Digg toolbar has been spotted in the wild. We tracked down a beta tester who gave us the skinny on its features. The toolbar lets you Digg or Bury the page you are on, and shows how many Diggs it has already received. There are also links to show related pages, as well as more pages from the same source voted highly by the Digg community or marked as up and coming.
Then there is… → Read More
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