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Bit.ly's shady business model

ozkatz.github.io

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Re: Bit.ly's shady business model

#31

Post by pduszak »

andrewvc wrote: post #21

This is absurd. I was the CTO at a startup with a small budget and looked into bit.ly. You know what I did? I looked at their damn TOS, because when you're running a business you look at ALL your third party service's TOS's. ESPECIALLY the free ones. It was quite nice of bit.ly to voluntarily cut your bill. Instead of learning something valuable about how the market works you've shifted the blame to someone else. You…

But... why can't they just give me free things? I don't see a problem with building my business atop the back of another and sharing 0% of the profit. /s

Re: Bit.ly's shady business model

#33

Post by johnward »

Bit.ly could have just stopped redirecting your urls, waited for you to figure out why and contact them. They didn't do that. They contacted you and gave you a chance to fix what you are doing wrong. Plus they probably could bill you for past traffic but they aren't doing that either.

Re: Bit.ly's shady business model

#34

Post by pushplay »

davidblueit wrote: post #22
eduardordm wrote: post #11

If you click on "pricing" you will see this: "STARTING AT $995/month". I think that's pretty clear. Maybe the service changed and they started to charge and they didn't notify you. Link: https://bitly.com/a/pricing And a quote: "Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity" - Robert J. Hanlon. --- Edit (please read this) Oz Kats said: "as of april last year when we signed up for bit.ly th…

there's no link to that page before signing up... no link from the home page that i can see. I think that's pretty unclear

The pricing link isn't at the top of the home page, but it is at the top of 'Features' and 'Get Started.' More over, the list of clients at the bottom includes some large companies. Surely you must realize that someone is paying for something here.

I think Facebook and Google have lulled us into a false, unquestioning expectation that online services are free; when really we should be suspicious of any company claiming to offer a free service.

Re: Bit.ly's shady business model

#35

Post by ozkatz »

pduszak wrote: post #31
andrewvc wrote: post #21

This is absurd. I was the CTO at a startup with a small budget and looked into bit.ly. You know what I did? I looked at their damn TOS, because when you're running a business you look at ALL your third party service's TOS's. ESPECIALLY the free ones. It was quite nice of bit.ly to voluntarily cut your bill. Instead of learning something valuable about how the market works you've shifted the blame to someone else. You…

But... why can't they just give me free things? I don't see a problem with building my business atop the back of another and sharing 0% of the profit. /s

I've also updated the post to reflect this: I don't mind paying. Its the policy of not leaving me a choice to do so by not allowing me to export my data and go elsewhere that bothers me.

Re: Bit.ly's shady business model

#36

Post by lgmspb »

andrewvc wrote: post #21

This is absurd. I was the CTO at a startup with a small budget and looked into bit.ly. You know what I did? I looked at their damn TOS, because when you're running a business you look at ALL your third party service's TOS's. ESPECIALLY the free ones. It was quite nice of bit.ly to voluntarily cut your bill. Instead of learning something valuable about how the market works you've shifted the blame to someone else. You…

I completely agree with you, but it would be nice of bit.ly to give guys some time to think, few days are obviously not enough

Re: Bit.ly's shady business model

#37

Post by markbnj »

lost_name wrote: post #6

I feel it's a little underhanded call it shady while simultaneous admitting the information was there in a document you opted not to read as you built your business around it.

I agree. The post title is very unfortunately worded. There's nothing shady about bit.ly adhering to, and expecting the OP to adhere to, their clearly-stated business policies.

Re: Bit.ly's shady business model

#38

Post by chrisBob »

Are you using a paid bit.ly account? They have instructions on getting a list of all of the links you have created here: http://support.bitly.com/knowledgebase/articles/241695--paid... It also seems like it should be straight forward crawl all of the links your users have created to build your own database of all of the URLs.

If you are not already a paying customer then I think they are letting you off easy. You are basing a business on a freemium product and the free part just ran out.

Re: Bit.ly's shady business model

#39

Post by stronglikedan »

ozkatz wrote: post #8
mcmillion wrote: post #5

If your product is taking off, learn from your mistake of not following the ToS and just build your own in-house URL shortener.

Very true. Not shying away from my responsibility. I'm mostly to blame. And still - can't say I like bit.ly's way of doing business.

Really, you are more than "mostly" to blame; you are "completely" to blame. You're also bordering on defamation, so you should probably reconsider your article.

As I said on the comment on your site: > Nothing is "deep within" the TOS, if you do what you are supposed to do when using it as part of your business model, and read it in it's entirety.

You completely and solely failed in your due diligence.

Re: Bit.ly's shady business model

#40

Post by nathas »

If you sign in, under the "Settings" -> "Branded Short Domain" section, there are two links.

One says "Personal", and lets you continue along without pricing being mentioned.

Then there's a "Business" link that forces you talk with Bitly -- I'm assuming because you would have immediately been notified that it cost money.

You abused a service, and now you're upset because you can't scam them. Cool.

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