What Bit.ly Knows About The Realtime Web

@mgsiegler / 10:16 am PDT • May 6, 2010

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.