Bit.ly Pulls Links Together with Bundles

In our 140 character limited world, shortened links are essential to sharing information with people. However, what if you have a bunch of links you want to share all at once? Usually you would shorten all of them and put into one message. Not really convenient, but it works. Today link-shortener bit.ly announced the solution to this: bit.ly bundles.

Bit.ly provided a little (very tongue-in-cheek) video from Montreal’s xtranormal on how the new system works:

It’s actually a lot easier than it sounds. First go to bit.ly and sign in with your account. Yes, unlike just shortening links on the fly, Bit.ly Bundles require you to sign into your bit.ly account. This allows for interactive features like discussion and such…and I see that forcing bit.ly accounts on everyone might turn people off.

Regardless, head to bit.ly/bundles/, click the “Bundle” button on the side or when you’re on your bit.ly homepage look for the “Bundle” button there as well:

Clicking the Bundle button you get this screen:

At the top you start pasting in links and you’ll see a thumbnail preview and some text from each below. You notice that “Thought of a good title…” spot? Yeah I kinda missed it as first, but it’s clickable and that’s where you put a title. It doesn’t appear that a title is required, but there is a cheeky “So-and-so hasn’t put in a title in…” in its place if you don’t (so I would). Once you get some links in you get something like this:

You can preview how the bundle will look to visitors at the left, share through various means and copy the single bundle link to paste into other places. And you can see a couple examples below of those bundles from some TNW coverage today:

• Today’s Facebook Messaging coverage
• Web 2.0 Summit coverage

Verdict?

Damn, this is cool. It’s too new to have had any discussions (powered by Disqus you’ll notice), but feel free to comment on the link bundles that I have above for testing and we’ll update the post with your comments and thoughts.

Great for sending blocks of articles that you’re researching or a single link to be a “wrap up” of some event. If you use the bit.ly sidebar bookmarklet, I’m happy to say that Bundles are already there, so go and enjoy.