URL shortening service Bitly has launched a new set of social APIs designed to help developers and business clients understand how their content is being shared over social networks.

From URL shortening to social

Bitly announced the new feature in a blog post earlier this week.

The changes cover three areas: realtime search, attention spikes and metadata about URLs.

Realtime search

With realtime search users enter a search term and are shown the most relevant, and current, URLs relating to their query.

“Queries can be specific phrases, like 'obama', or filtering criteria, like 'stories about food being read by people in Brooklyn',” explained Bitly's chief data scientist Hilary Mason.

Attention spikes

As the name suggests, this feature shows which content is currently popular around the web, similar to Twitter's trending topics.

At the time of writing the term 'giant squid' was topping the list. 

Metadata

Users can now query URLs around terms such as keywords, topics, content, language and location relevance.

Bitly says this will help developers with application building. 

Branching out

In 2012 Bitly created 8.4 billion links, which translates to 300 million links daily. According to Microsoft Research, Bitly generates 1 per cent of all links on the internet. 

Building on this massive database, Bitly launched a new look with social functionality in June 2012. These new APIs show the platform is working to become more than a URL shortening service. 

For business users, Bitly's social APIs are a handy way to see which topics are currently trending, and understand how your content is being shared. 

To start using the new Bitly APIs visit rt.ly/sign_up.

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