140 characters vs. Sean Parker

bitly (formerly bit.ly) was the default URL shortening service for Twitter. The company:

- Received its Seed in January 2008 from betaworks
- Raised a Series A from a host of big name angels in March of 2009 (Ron Conway, Chris Sacca, Roger Ehrenberg to name a few)
- Issued debt in February 2010
- Raised $10mm in Series B in October 2010 from RRE Ventures, SV Angels, Mitch Kapor and AOL Ventures among others

Some big names in the venture space to say the least. And the company was going along great with one inherent issue: it was directly tied to Twitter. Then one day it wasn't. Inevitably Twitter created its own automatic shortener. It developed t.co to automatically shorten links. And then companies began to develop their own customizable shortened links. es.pn. goo.gl. huff.po.

And now link shortening has drawn the ire of he of Napster, he of Facebook, he of Justin Timberlake. Sean Parker would like to see it done away with altogther

sparker 7 Oct
The need for link shortening is idiotic, @jack -- links should be meta-data attachments to each tweet, not part of 140 char limit

Parker  joined Twitter and waited 4 days to start a campaign against link shortening. What will happen? Probably nothing and Parker is hardly the first to suggest this, maybe the most influential, but not the first. If @jack wakes up one morning and decides Sean Parker is right, will an industry vanish as quickly as it rose? 

Conversely, link shortening companies were able to successfully tie themselves to a growing giant in the industry. Tinyurl had won. Then bitly. Now who knows? But if Parker has his way it will be no one.

The interdependence rings similar to Zynga, online social gaming and Facebook. Although Zynga continues to work on Project Z, they and similar companies are at the alter with Facebook. If the marriage works, like it appears to have for Zynga, your prenup expires and are sitting pretty. Barnacles attach themselves to whales and do just fine.

bitly and other link shortening platforms cost virtually nothing and angels and VCs will have vastly different risk profiles. Some will want to spray singles and doubles all over the infield. The Ichiros. The three yards and a cloud of dust. And others will swing for the fences every time. Jason Heyward. The Raiders' vertical passing. And ultimately anyone that invested in the industry knew the risks involved in being a complimentary service to Twitter.

Even if they didn't count Sean Parker among them.



As I wrote this bitly released a predictive social search for their premium users

Thanks to Monster for help