Dive Brief:
- Bitly—the link-shortening service often used for social posts, especially on Twitter—has released a new feature that will open links directly into mobile apps.
- With the new feature, a user can click, for example, on a link on Twitter for a story on Buzzfeed. Rather than opening to Buzzfeed's mobile site, it opens the Buzzfeed app or prompts the user to download the app.
- The company promises the new feature will help drive app traffic and offer new insight for clients on where mobile app traffic is coming from.
Dive Insight:
Bitly is sitting in a gold mine of third party data. Incorporating mobile apps into that data will only improve the company's position of being able to deliver anonymous and detailed data on users. The new feature is great news for app developers, too—Bitly delivers 600 million links a day. Grabbing a piece of that action will surely boost app downloads and traffic.
