FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:

New URL Shortener br.st! Debuts with More Advanced Analytics than Bit.ly

Phoenix, AZ September 2, 2009 – Brinkster, a web hosting company, debuts a new URL shortener called br.st! (burst).  br.st! allows you to take a long URL, shorten it, share it to 10+ social networking sites, and then track the traffic to it.  In the crowded field of URL shorteners br.st! offers advantages over others with advanced analytics, scanning for malware, preview links with screenshots, easy posting to social networking sites, and iPhone bookmarklets.

Several URL shorteners offer analytics, including market leader Bit.ly, but few offer them as advanced as br.st!  With br.st!, real-time stats are automatically in the visitors own time zone and can display the comparison of up three metrics graphically (total, country, region/state).  Bit.ly displays stats in US Eastern Standard time zone only, does not show location deeper than country, and shows only one metric graphically at a time.

br.st! stats showing three metrics compared

br.st! scans for malware three different times during the use of a br.st! link.  Each scan is done against the Google Safe Browsing list that is updated every 30 minutes.  Links are scanned when they are first submitted to be shortened, when a preview link is accessed, and when a short link is clicked on.  This helps prevent someone from submitting a link and then adding malware to it after it has been shortened.

br.st! users also have the option of adding a “-” to the end of any br.st! link to view a preview page.  The preview page displays a screenshot, page title, meta keywords, malware scan information, and the full destination link.
After shortening a link at br.st!, users can type a tweet or post and select from 10+ social networking sites including Twitter and Facebook to send it to.

br.st! also offers bookmarklets for use on the iPhone with Tweetie and Twitterrific.  The iPhone bookmarklet takes the website address that a user is viewing and automatically shortens and posts it into Tweetie or Twitterrific. http://br.st/iphone-bookmarklet.aspx
br.st! is also planning on releasing Google Analytics integration and image and file sharing in the next 60-90 days.

About Brinkster

br.st! is a service of Brinkster, a 10 year old web hosting company with customers in over 175 countries supporting over 60,000 domains. The company offers shared web hosting, dedicated servers and email hosting services from its own private top-tier datacenter in Phoenix, Arizona. http://www.brinkster.com

More information can be found about Google Safe Browsing at the following websites:
http://code.google.com/apis/safebrowsing/
http://www.stopbadware.org/

Brinkster is a registered trademark of Brinkster Communications Corporation.
All other names of companies or products may be the trademarks of their respective owners.

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