In this day and age, most of the links that we see on social media, and even in emails, are shortened links. And this is due to the character limits that we have on these platforms – with Twitter being the most strict character limit. Of course, these smaller links do look better than longer ones that we often have to deal with. Bitly is perhaps the most popular link shortening service around, and they have finally released their official app on Android. Prior to this, if you wanted to shorten a link on your smartphone or tablet, and use Bitly, you either had to use an unofficial app or head to their website. Their website does work pretty well on mobile, but having a dedicated app is definitely a better experience.
Bitly brings a desktop experience to your smartphone. Allowing you to copy, customize, as well as share your links all from the app on your smartphone. Additionally, Bitly allows you to view all of your links that you have shortened on your account. This means you are able to take a look at the stats for these links and see how well they are doing. The app allows you to also see channel data, uncover dark social media (i.e. when no one is actually viewing your updates on social media) and also see when your audience is the most engaged in your links that you’ve shared. As expected, Bitly does also allow you to connect your social media accounts to the service, which will allow you to easily share your links across the web, as well as through text messages.
To put it simply, Bitly is a pretty simple app to use. While most people will want to use it to shorten their links that they share on sites like Twitter, Google+, Facebook, Instagram and others, it is also a great tool for social media professionals who rely on sharing links to these platforms. Having the ability to check out the stats on links you’ve shared from within the app is definitely a big deal, and it makes things much easier for everyone. Bitly is a fairly small app, coming in at about 5.8MB, and it is completely free – without a single in-app purchase. You can pick it up from the Google Play Store today!
