Link-shortening service Bitly on Tuesday announced raising $15 million in new funding led by Vinod Khosla at Khosla Ventures. The company said it will use the additional
capital to hire staff and expand its social Web products.
Bitly launched a revamped Web site in May with the aim of becoming a broader social bookmarking hub built around saving and sharing
links it calls “bitmarks.”
Through the site, people can organize these bitmarks into bundles around certain topics, search and filter them, share them via Facebook and
Twitter, and make them public or private.
As a result of the upgrade, the company said it’s already seen daily registrations increase by 300% since relaunching. “At Bitly our
vision is to be the primary online service for sharing and discovering interesting content,” it stated.
Reports at the time of the relaunch, however, highlighted a backlash to
the new design because of the departure from its roots as a simple utility for shortening links. Bitly CEO Peter Stern told AllThingsD the site has added 200,000 registered users in the last month as
it now offers a more mainstream service.
Even with a growing user base, though, the company has no plans to add advertising. It continues to charge business users to make money. With
the latest investment, Bitly has raised a total of $28.5 million to date. Participating in the round with Khosla were prior investors RRE Ventures and O’Reilly AlphaTech Ventures.