bitly helps you collect, organize, shorten and share links. We are currently reinventing how people discover and share content on the web.
Hiring:
Infrastructure Engineers
Application Engineers
Frontend Engineers
Systems Administrators/DevOps
We work at massive scale, using a straightforward/well reasoned stack of open source software components. We are predominantly a Python/C shop, but we prize passion, problem solving ability, and intelligence over any specific language background.
A large number of New York City startups use something called PartyChat (hosted on AppEngine). It is maintained by some current/former NYC Googlers, and basically creates an IRC style chat interface over XMPP, allowing you to create fairly full featured chatrooms using your various Gtalk or XMPP accounts. It's easily extensible with commands and "hooks", so you can pipe code commits, deploy messages, alerts, and the like into the chatroom.
Also check out partychat-hooks for simple HTTP API integration. It was written by one of our engineers at bitly to ease some of the aforementioned integrations. http://partychat-hooks.appspot.com/
In much the same way that we don't frame links, or permanently remove flagged links, we would never return a short link that pointed to anything other than the link requested by the API, or by the user via an interface. It's a simple, deterministic API. The downsides of the proposed approach are far more extreme than any potential upside.
The intent behind the very statement you quoted was to convey that we do precisely that. However, also mentioned was the fact that in a number of cases, modifiable destination redirects are embedded within the chain. In those cases, unless the redirect is crawled on every clickthrough, the integrity of the chain is difficult to assert.
We always consider ways in which to provide the best level of service to our end users and API users, while preventing unintended side effects. There are pros and cons to every approach, and they have to be evaluated with care.
From day one, we've prized security, transparency, reliability, and openness at bit.ly. Along the way, we've made a number of product decisions based on those tenets. Among those are link permanence (link destinations don't change once created), the avoidance of anything that interferes with user experience (we've never framed, nor will we), and a dedicated focus on spam and malware detection, so that our users can click on bit.ly links with a high degree of confidence.
We take our responsibility as internet citizens seriously, and you'll see this exhibited even in the small details of the ways in which we manage flagged links (you'll notice we never actually disable a redirect, and at most simply insert an interstitial which retains the end destination link).
In the course of analyzing content for spam, malware, and phishing attacks, we rely on a number of systems, both internal and external. Over the course of the past year, a number of spammers have attempted to use various levels of indirection through redirectors (some of which are reconfigurable), in order to obfuscate and cloak their efforts. In fact, the bulk of shortens to bit.ly coming through other URL shorteners have tended to be attempts to spam the system. While our crawlers do of course follow links through redirections, the inclusion of modifiable redirects in the stream, and our analysis of the preponderance of spam attempts via these vectors have made it necessary and appropriate in some cases to block the URL shorteners.
Just to reiterate, the only goal is and always has been to protect the end user clicking on bit.ly links, regardless of the link source. Given that multiple layer wrapping of URL redirectors tends to be an edge case based on inappropriate API usage, confused users, or in the preponderance of cases, attempts to spam, we think this has been a fair approach. As such, you'll note that we did in fact update our interstitial warning pages with language better reflecting the reasoning behind the status. We're happy to see a healthy, vibrant, shortening ecosystem, and have no intention whatsoever to put a damper on other sites in the space.
Some have suggested we simply not shorten URLs already pointing to 3rd party short URLs. While this is a potential possibility, our API responses and the innumerable clients and scripts that use these methods aren't currently designed with this state in mind. Consequently, any changes would have to be carefully considered.
As with any product, bit.ly is a work in progress, and we're always interested in finding ways to best serve our users, while maintaining the integrity and openness
of the product.
Tell that to foursquare, tumblr, bit.ly, etsy, gilt, drop.io, aviary, boxee, meetup, gdgt, hunch, betaworks, hot potato, kickstarter, challengepost, etc, etc, etc. All New York startups.
The per capita murder rate is quite low for a large city. New York City's population is so much higher than any other city in the country that it tends to skew your perception.
The suggested method isn't going to work for families and couples with adjacent seats.
If the primary impediment to rapid boarding is cargo stowage, it seems like it would make sense to focus efforts on developing an alternative carry-on cargo stowage system.
bitly helps you collect, organize, shorten and share links. We are currently reinventing how people discover and share content on the web.
Hiring:
Infrastructure Engineers
Application Engineers
Frontend Engineers
Systems Administrators/DevOps
We work at massive scale, using a straightforward/well reasoned stack of open source software components. We are predominantly a Python/C shop, but we prize passion, problem solving ability, and intelligence over any specific language background.
Apply at [email protected] or visit bitly.com/jobs to learn more.