Bit.ly Raises $10 Million Series B, Still Growing Like Crazy

It looks like short links are here to stay, at least for a while longer. Bit.ly, the largest independent link shortening service out there, closed a $10 million Series B financing. The round was led by RRE Ventures, with AOL Ventures also becoming a new investor. Existing investors betaworks, O'Reilly Alpha Tech Ventures, SV Angel, Founders Fund, and a few angels participated as well.

Every day, more than 200 million bit.ly short links are clicked on and decoded by the link-shortening service. Bit.ly keeps growing despite no longer being the default link shortener for Twitter. In September, nearly 6 billion bit.ly links were clicked (or decoded), up from 3.4 billion six months earlier. Twitter now only represents about a third of bit.ly's links, down from about 60 percent last December when it stopped being the default link shortener for Twitter. Facebook, MySpace, and new services such as Formspring are more than picking up the slack.

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