Hands on with Bit.ly Pro (aka Zatz.TV)

We can’t say Zatz Not Funny really needs custom link shortening. But it’s kinda cool in a vanity plate sort of way. And at only $35/year (for .tv Tuvalu domain registration), why not?

I’ve been a long time bit.ly proponent as a way to shorten links for sharing on Twitter, given their high availability and pretty analytics. Now, due to the recent .ly domain dust up, I’ve learned that bit.ly also white labels their shortening services for others – which is how sites like the Washington Post, Amazon, and TechCrunch provide unique and concise links. Fortunately, in addition to their enterprise class solution (~$1k/mo), there’s a free Bit.ly Pro tier available to those of us working with smaller budgets.

At our level, the customized bit.ly service provides two ways to leverage our new zatz.tv domain. First, anyone who uses bit.ly to share a ZNF link will end up presenting a zatz.tv string. Second, any link from any site that I choose to share will also feature our brand:

Setting up Bit.ly Pro was a pretty simple affair. I updated the zatz.tv A DNS record to point to bit.ly and uploaded a HTML file to ZNF to prove it belongs to us. Going with a .tv domain over .it (Italy) or .me (Montenegro) cost us double or triple, but it’s in line with our blog personality and these are relatively small sums of money. Lastly, bit.ly Pro isn’t the only game in town if you’re interested – I did uncover a few roll-your-own scripts and other hosted services, like Stumble Upon, that offer similar custom link shortening. Although I can’t imagine anything simpler to implement than bit.ly.

11 thoughts on “Hands on with Bit.ly Pro (aka Zatz.TV)”

  1. That’s pretty crazy that it goes from free… to free… to $995/month. You’d think there’d be some sort of intermediate service in there for smaller bloggers who might be willing to spend $10 to $100 per month.

  2. Hey now, don’t give them any crazy ideas! All Web 2.0 services are to be free, funded merely by good wishes and blog coverage.

    Seriously, I don’t think I care enough to pay $10/mo. But I might pay $25 or $40/yr. I suppose it’s very possible they’ll request some sort of compensation once they shed the beta label. Then again, maybe there’s some value in the analytics that they mine and resell?

  3. Todd, yeah I linked to coverage of that above, where I realized I could have my own custom domain for shortening. It does appear that nations can and will exert control over their online property – one reason I probably wouldn’t consider moving ZNF to zatz.tv permanently. As for bit.ly, I can’t imagine their service would ever go away – although they might very well want (or be forced) to relocate.

  4. I saw the article by Pegoraro and the coverage of .ly the other day and had never realized that the domain was owned by Libya. I’m fairly liberal with my international politics, but we’re what 3 years removed from Libya being labelled as a state sponsor of terrorism?

  5. I’m hoping the government and ~12,000 residents of Tuvalu are less controversial. ;) From Wikipedia:

    Tuvalu, formerly known as the Ellice Islands, is a Polynesian island nation located in the Pacific Ocean, midway between Hawaii and Australia. Its nearest neighbours are Kiribati, Nauru, Samoa and Fiji. It comprises four reef islands and five true atolls. Its population of 12,373 makes it the second-least populous sovereign state in the world, with only Vatican City having fewer inhabitants.

  6. “Netgear-branded Roku XD on sale at Fry’s http://zatz.tv/cHLayc [Engadget]”

    Frankly, I’m appalled at the lack of abstraction of the twitter UI that has made shortening services necessary in the first place.

    Twitter makes links ugly, and they shouldn’t be.

    But we work with the platforms that work…

  7. Pownce seemed to have some better ideas how to incorporate various media while staying relatively lightweight. Unfortunately (?) Twitter had the vast majority of eyeballs and Pownce goes down in history as a mere social media/blogging footnote.

  8. I like Zatz.tv URL, but what about Zatz.nf? NF domains seem to be uber-expensive everywhere ($1250-1300/yr), but EuroDNS offers them for 128 euros (http://www.eurodns.com/top-level-domain/Norfolk%20Island/nf).

    P.S. I really wish AN would allow two letter domains, so I could talk them into giving me iv.an :)

    P. P.S. It’s too bad Kevin Rose couldn’t dedicate enough of his attention to promoting Pownce as I liked it more than Twitter.

  9. FYI, just signed up fpr the pro account for a work related venture. Thanks for covering this earlier. Helped to spur the idea!

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