Twitter has become most powerful social networking portal where people communicate thru 140 character messages. This short space needs a URL shortening service to compress the URL into a short length URL. Twitter was using TinyURL as its default URL shortening service but now it has changed and Bit.ly is now the default URL shortening service provider.
TinyURL was with Twitter since its inception but because of some really good features Bit.ly taken over that role from TinyURL. Some of the important features in Bit.ly is as below which are not there in TinyURL. Actually TinyURL didn’t add anything since a long time.
Plus Points of using Bit.ly over TinyURL,
1. Advantage of Bit.ly cache: Bit.ly always create a mirror copy of the web page for which it is generating the short URL. So that you can access the page when the original link is down for maintenance or moved permanently.
2. Track the Links: Bit.ly keep track of the numbers that how many times that short URL got clicked by people. So that you can check the popularity.
3. Helpful for Referrals: You can see the source of origination for clicks.
Now you can understand why twitter shifted from TinyURL to Bit.ly. Twitter also wants to provide benefits of bit.ly to its users.