The URL shortening market has been experiencing a renaissance ever since Twitter's 140 character limit spurred the necessity of shorter URLs. Since they are relatively simple to implement, we've seen hundreds, if not thousands, of new shorteners come to the market, from the useful to the very strange.
While this market has a lot of competitors, two big players dominate the space: Bit.ly and TinyURL. For a long time, TinyURL was winning the war, despite Bit.ly's advanced features. The game changed though when Bit.ly became Twitter's default URL shortener.
New numbers from Compete.com (which measures U.S. traffic stats) now reveal a major development in the URL shortener market: Bit.ly has now dethroned TinyURL as the largest URL shortener on the web. Here is the newest traffic graph and stats:
In May, TinyURL had 5.34 million U.S. visitors, compared to Bit.ly's 2.96 million. But my, how things can change in three months. In August, TinyURL grew only to 5.64 million visitors (about 5.4% growth) while it's upstart competitor skyrocketed to 5.71 million visitors, which equates to a staggering 93% rise in traffic in just three months.
If this trend continues, as we believe is likely, Bit.ly will separate itself from its older competitor. Bit.ly is putting out new innovations at a fast pace (most recently the launch of J.mp), has millions in funding, and can count Twitter as a supporter.