Bitly makes link shortening easy again after users revolted

Link-shortening and bookmarking service Bitly has revised its site design after users complained that shortening links became too complicated, the company announced today in a blog post.

The site launched an extensive redesign last week that turned users accounts into more of a bookmarking service. What once took a single click to create a shortened link now took three clicks and it would save your link. But users were noticeably upset with the change, especially because if you don’t login to Bitly, you could easily shorten a link.

Well, the company heard the complaints and has made several revisions to the site to fix the issues. The company writes:

We mean it when we say we’ve been reading all your tweets and emails. And we’re listening! In the week since our release, we’re already making adjustments, so that saving and shortening links in the new bitly is a whole lot easier.

Now, when you paste a link into the “Paste a link here…” box at the top of the page, it will be instantly saved when you paste it (no second click needed)— and the shortlink will be right there ready for you to copy. You can still edit the privacy, notes, or bundles, and of course share it.

The company has also made the following changes:

• Copy and customize buttons on the newly expanded stats page
• Chrome extension will now automatically add highlighted text to the notes field.
• iPhone app 1.01 — fixes crashes when running on iPad, expands support for creating a new account without Facebook or Twitter.
• Bulk actions got easier with the new drop-down button.
• Gazillions of small bug fixes and UI tweaks.

Frankly, I’m just happy the service has made it easy to shorten links from a user account. I can finally login again!

Photo credit: Bitly