The web’s dominant URL shortener, Bit.ly, has announced that it has acquired Twitterfeed, the social media publishing tool.

Twitterfeed is one of the tools that automatically published RSS feeds to social networks with a title and shortened ‘Bit.ly link’.  By using the Twitterfeed service, you can set your blog up to post to your Twitter account, or your Twitter RSS feed to publish directly to your LinkedIn page.

While it is highly likely that some Twitterfeed functionality will pop up in Bit.ly at some point,  Bit.ly CEO Peter Stern made it clear that it is not the Twitterfeed technology that persuaded  Bit.ly to make the purchase when he aoounced:

“Let’s face it, posting updates to Twitter is not rocket science,”

Far more attractive / valuable  is Twitterfeed’s extensive user base and the skills and knowledge of its creator, Mario Menti.  Twitterfeed has in excess of 1 million unique users and posts more than 5 million updates every month (granted, those are automatic).  Bit.ly may well take the opportunity to promote its own analytics features to the twitterfeed user base –  and  also ‘up-sell’  them to its premium data tools.

In the short term though it is unlikely that either Bit.ly users or Twitterfeed users will notice any difference due to the change in ownership.

“We bought it because it’s a product, it’s out there, it’s growing, it’s in use,” says Stern, who became CEO in May after the deal had closed. “For the foreseeable future it’s kind of business as usual.”

For more digital marketing news please leave a comment below or visit GB Web Marketing – Internet Marketing Services for UK Businesses.