Apps are suppose to make your life easier, not more complicated. You really know when an app's UI has changed before opening the app when you notice that its app icon has changed. And, Bitly's changed from an outlined orange logo to a dark orange background with the outlined logo in white. Certainly a noticeable change.
In the old Bitly app for iPhone, you really didn't have to do much to save, shorten, and share a link. You could be in another browser or in an RSS reader app and the order of operations used to be simple with few steps:
In a browser or RSS reader, copy the link
Bitly's app would automatically recognize that a link was copied, and take both the Title of the link and the link itself, packaged together on a screen that would allow you to edit or insert a new Title (if needed), then share the link to one or all of your connected social media accounts.
It was:
Copy link / Bitly app automatically shortens / Share link
Now, it is:
Copy link
In the Bitly app, you now need to hit the + symbol to create a link (sadly no automatic detect)
Oops, no title at all. Go back to the browser and copy the title from the article
Go back to the Bitly app, edit the link and paste the title
Then, LEFT swipe (left to right) to share
But, sharing no longer brings up a list of your connected accounts, it just shows the default sharing options that the Chrome browser shows
Share / Scroll sideways through the list of options / Post
Alas, no more Bitly convenience for me. Looks like it is back to long URLs and the Feedly share button.
With Feedly, it's Share / Post, and you're done. No analytics. Twitter has some analytics but they're not terribly useful just yet.
Those 4 extra minutes every $5 reward cycle with Bing Rewards, I think I gain them back each time I don't use the Bitly app to share links.
Customer Loyalty Programs: Bing and Starbucks
This year two companies revitalized their rewards programs. The rebranding is probably working out great for their advertisers, but it really isn't working out for me. I mean heck, I really didn't expect to do more work to get something for free. Although, for now, the perks of using these apps are still a nice to have. The two in this blog post are Microsoft's Bing search app and Starbucks Rewards app.
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