innonate Exploring the social side of innovation, technology, business, and public policy

5Jan/09N/A8

Bitly + iPhone + Twitter hack

People who follow me on Twitter know that most of the links I send have been shortened by Bitly. However, when "Tweeting" a link from my iPhone, it's generally difficult to get the URL in my Twitter client to share, let alone shorten it.

Here's how I solved the problem, connecting Bit.ly, Twitter, and my iPhone so I can send the cool links I find while reading mobilly.

For those of you who don't know, Bit.ly is a NY-based and Betaworks-incubated URL shortening service. Because of it's rich click-through stats, it's simply a tool I could not live without (more on why tracking click-throughs in Twitter is important in a forthcoming blog post).

Step 1

Add the bit.ly bookmarklet to Safari

Bitly Bookmarklet

Step 2

Sync your Safari bookmarks with your iPhone (I use MobileMe so it does it automagically, but you can also do this manually on the "Info" tab in iTunes).

Step 3

Go back to the page you want to share in your iPhone's browser.

Step 4

Go into your bookmarks and click the "bit.ly" bookmark.

Bookmark

Step 5

Congrats! You now have a shortened link.

Shortened Link

Step 6

Type your message, click Sign-in/Post (where you'll have to enter your Twitter credentials).

Type your message

And there you have it! It's a great way to use bitly on your iPhone!

Reblog this post [with Zemanta]

About Nate Westheimer

Nate is the Co-Founder and VP Product of AnyClip. He is also the Organizer of the 10,000 member NY Tech Meetup.
Tagged as: , , Leave a comment
  • barkerja
    Uhmm, why not use an app like Tweetie that makes use of bit.ly? A native app is much more usable than twitter via Safari.
  • The question is how do you Tweet a link using bitly starting from
    reading an article in mobile Safari. Its easy to tweet something in a
    client, but how do you get the link in there and have it shortened by
    bitly?
  • Mo
    Looks like Tweetie added a way to do this from Safari.

    http://www.atebits.com/software/tweetie/bookmar...
  • This is good for shortening the URL from Safari but it doesn't keep track of the url bit in my bitly account. Maybe I am doing it wrong.
  • Sign into bit.ly in your iPhone Safari once. After that everything
    should be kosher (and linked to your account).
  • Mo
    Looking for a way besides the desktop sync and MobileMe to sync this bookmark.
blog comments powered by Disqus
« Going to CES Please vote »

Who is Nate?

You've found Nate Westheimer's blog. Nate wears many hats. He's the EVP Product & Technology and Co-founder of AnyClip, the Organizer of the NY Tech Meetup, and Advisor to Flybridge Capital Partners. More about Nate can be read on his Bio page and you can follow his thoughts on Twitter

Subscribe & Follow

Click on this button and be cool like .
You can also follow me on Twitter by clicking here:
TwitterCounter for @innonate

Office Hours

Every Friday, I open my schedule for hour-long office hours. Click to hear more.

Recent Comments