bit.ly and 1.usa.gov, thanks bit.ly!
Wow. Just… Wow.
Very rarely do companies surprise me in good ways anymore, but bit.ly surprised me in an amazing and positive way this week that I felt compelled to share.
I recently read that bit.ly had started shortening .gov domains to 1.usa.gov/foo, and I just happened to be in
the middle of attempting to automate go.usa.gov shortening for a project I’m working on, the Auroral Resources Toolkit. For those that don’t know, go.usa.gov is a US government shortening tool provided by the GSA, which all federal organizations are allowed to use. Unfortunately however, they don’t provide an API for using it programmatically, so, no dice.
I attempted to use bit.ly’s API to shorten some URLs for my project, and for a few other domains in my organization, and found that they weren’t resolving to 1.usa.gov URLs. So, I emailed the fine folks at bit.ly to ask what I needed to do to make it happen. Rather than an automated or terse response, as is the norm, I got an email from an actual human in less than 4 hours stating that they would have to add the domain to their side, and that it would be done shortly. From my initial email to the time the domains had been added, roughly 6 hours total had passed. Yes, that’s correct, I emailed them, and the same day I got a response and addition of the domains in question to 1.usa.gov resolution. Very Cool.
Bit.ly’s web interface allows for customization, while the API, at the moment anyhow, only appears to allow
their service to determine the hash. Here’s a custom example with some data around the failure of the Galaxy15 satellite in 2010: 1.usa.gov/mfZUWL. I’ve created several custom URLs for major events similar to this, and have the API in use for users to share their workspaces with others. It turned out quite well, I’m very pleased. It also played well at the Space Weather Workshop this week in Boulder.
Perfect timing for the service at large bit.ly and go.usa.gov folks that collaborated on it, and amazing customer service from bit.ly!