Ian On The Red Dot

Just trying something random. Please help by clicking on this link . It leads to one of my posts on this site.

A while back, I read about this URL shortening service bit.ly. Apparently, it is so good that Marshall Kirkpatrick from ReadWriteWeb called it the TinyURL of the future. Two things that it does which is really useful - it provides stats and caches the page linked to.

I was thinking about the innovation going on with bit.ly and other url shorteners and how they could actually help monetize an individual’s social network which is a rather crass thing to do but I’m sure that are people willing to do it.

Imagine this - instead of just shortening the url, you shorten the url using a seed. For example, now when I shorten the URL ian.onthereddot.com, I get http://bit.ly/2xRGSq. What if I give both the url to shorten and my username on Facebook.

The new shortened URL will be linked to me. Whenever I share that link on Facebook, statistics can be gathered to show how effective my sharing is because that URL can be traced to me. So instead of just knowing that traffic is coming from Facebook, you can tell which user is sharing on Facebook and who is helping generate the traffic.

So, how do you monetize your social network?

You guarantee that your sharing can generate X amount of traffic. Someone offers a price for that X amount of traffic. You decide if it is worth abusing your network for that 30 pieces of silver.

You start sharing links. The URL shortening service is able to track if you are meeting the quota. If you meet the quota, then, you get money.

hmmm….sounded better in my head.