Bit.ly to Introduce Real-Time Aggregation

Bit.ly, the popular URL shortening service, has been working on a new product to expand its offerings. Codenamed Bit.ly Now, the new service will aggregate the most popular links used by the system at any given time and provide a way of visualizing and ranking their progress. If it is confirmed, as reported by TechCrunch, the new service would put the company in direct competition with aggregators like Digg.

With the rise of Twitter and its 140-character limitation, a great number of URL shortening services have popped up. While these types of services have been around for years, it took the massive surge in popularity of the micro-blogging platform to give them a real useful purpose. Bit.ly has risen to the top of these URL shortening services and was even adopted by Twitter to use on the main site. And it's not just Twitter that makes use of it; bit.ly has proved quite popular for Facebook and other forms of link sharing as well. The site handles about 7 million URLs a day, almost half of which are new, and URLs from the services get 150 million views every week.

The best part is the integrated statistics available for its users for every link they share. This gives those using bit.ly a much clearer view on how their link is spreading and how well it is doing, compared to just sharing the direct link. Of course, the system isn't that good for SEO or for users that have to go through a middleman to get to the content but it is great for those spreading the links.

Bit.ly now wants to make use of all the content, links and statistics coming from the site and create a service aggregating the most popular stories and the fastest-spreading links. The real-time nature of the service could prove a big threat to other news aggregators, especially those relying on user contribution, like Digg.