[michaelbuckbee]

I think a common misconception is thinking that bit.ly is in the business of shortening URLs when in reality they're in the analytics business of tracking when, where and how often people use and share links.

As to monetization, they already have a $1000/month enterprise level plan that gives you tons of analytics and that runs lots of the custom branded URL shorteners (4sq.com, yhoo.it, pep.si, cs.pn).

If I were a bit.ly investor my number one concern would be Google linking up their goog.gl shortener with Google Analytics. Doing so would punch a huge hole in Bitly's value proposition.