One of the reasons why Tr.im decided to initially shut themselves down is because of the monopoly that Bit.ly has for URL shortening services.  Twitter and TweetDeck both use Bit.ly as the default URL shortening services.  Now Google, TypePad, and CBS has embraced Bit.ly for shortening the URLs of their content.

One of the reasons why Bit.ly has become the preferred choice for URL shortening is because of their constant service upgrades.  Last month Bit.ly started to track what links are malicious in content and warns users before sending them to the link.

Within the last few weeks, Google added Bit.ly to Google Reader’s “send-to” feature.  This feature allows anyone using Google Reader to send Bit.ly links on Twitter to their followers.

TypePad added a feature that generates Bit.ly links on Twitter for new blog posts.  Bit.ly statistics have also been added into TypePad’s dashboard.  All TypePad users will see this feature integrated by this fall.

CBS is also launched a new service called cbs.bit.ly.  This service tracks the URLs on CBS’ website that has been shortened and tracks how many people clicked on the shortened links.

John Resig of Mozilla also designed a Retweet button using the Bit.ly JavaScript API.

Pownce was a pretty cool service while it lasted.  I actually did not really sign up until last week and just found out that they would be shutting the service down because Six Apart acquired them.  Six Apart created blogging software TypePad, Movable Type, and Vox.

“We’re very happy that Six Apart wants to invest in growing the vision that we the founders of Pownce believe so strongly in and we’re very excited to take our vision to all of Six Apart’s products,” stated Culver on the Pownce Blog.  “Mike and I have joined Six Apart as part of their engineering team and we’re looking forward to being a part of the talented group that has created amazing tools for blogging and publishing.”

Pownce launched in June 2007 and will be officially shutting down on December 15.  Leah Culver and Mike Malone will be joining the Six Apart team while Daniel Burka and Kevin Rose will become their advisers.

Brad Fitzpatrick is the founder of LiveJournal.  LiveJournal has over 5 million accounts and currently serves as the Chief Architect of Six Apart, the company that owns LiveJournal, Vox, Movable Type, and TypePad.  Wikipedia also has an in-depth history of Six Apart.

What helped scale the high number of users for LiveJournal, Fitzpatrick led the development of memcached, a distributed cache system widely used by social networks and blogs today.  Even Facebook uses it for scaling the high number of users too.

Another portion of the rumor includes speculation regarding Facebook and MySpace making an offer for Fitzpatrick as well.  Why the leave?  Some of the sources I’ve read included that Fitzpatrick is simply bored.  And apparently, Six Apart’s management has tumultous relationships:

“The company has been divided into two departments. One is engaged in selling blogs and different software to large companies, while the other supervises Live Journal and Vox social networks. According to Western analysts, the mentioned departments are difficult to get along within one company, while the management presented by the Barak Berkowitz, the Acting Director, Mena Trott, President and Founder, and Andrew Anker, Head of Business Department, simply do not cope with their duties and are not able to withdraw Six Apart out of a prolonged crises.”^[1]

References:
[1] CNews: Live Journal creator leaves for Google
[2] ValleyWag: LiveJournal creator leaves as Six Apart fails to spin

Six Apart Ltd. has released the much-awaited Vox today.  Six Apart owns popular blogging websites, Live Journal, TypePad, and Movable Type.  Six Apart hopes to encourage more people to use blogs who are not tech-savvy. 

Vox is entering the blogging industry with numerous competitors.  Vox will be facing off against other easy-to-setup blog tools such as Google’s Blogger, Windows Live Spaces, and Xanga.  Not only that, but Vox will also be taking on social networks with blog features such as Facebook Notes, MySpace blogs, Friendster blogs, and countless other websites.

According to ITworld.com, “Mena Trott, Six Apart’s president and co-founder, maintains that each service appeals to a different type of person. TypePad, which requires a fee, is aimed at bloggers with a certain degree of technical savvy and an interest in drawing large audiences to their sites. Meanwhile, LiveJournal, which has free and fee-based levels of service, is more of a social network that generally appeals to people under 25, she said.”  Vox is likely to appeal to a blog audience for users looking for a small-scale number of visitors. 

Vox will allow users to have similar capabilities as MySpace profiles.  Users will be able to embed audio, video, and pictures from providers such as Flickr, YouTube, and Google Video. Vox will also allow blogs to deliver feeds via RSS. 

The success that Movable Type, Live Journal, and TypePad has had thus far is evidence that Six Apart’s Vox will be a definete hit as well.  According to Alexa traffic, Vox is currently the #2309 ranked website according to its 3 month average and according to Today’s hits, it is ranked #1725.