Bit.ly, a US-based provider of shortened web links, has raised $10m in its series B round from a consortium including media group AOL’s corporate venturing division, according to the company’s blog.
AOL Ventures participated as a new investor alongside corporate venturing peer O’Reilly AlphaTech Ventures, which invests on behalf of O’Reilly Media, in the B round led by venture capital firm RRE Ventures. The remaining consortium members were angel investors or their networks, Founders Fund, SV Angel and Betaworks.
Bit.ly has previously raised $5m, according to news provider TechCrunch, which also said the company would be rolling out a news service in partnership with New York Times later this year.
So far this year, bit.ly links have been clicked more than 40.6 billion times, the company’s blog said, and there have been over 4 billion unique URLs shortened using bit.ly.
Early this year bit.ly launched http://bit.ly/prohttp://bit.ly/pro, as a white-label service for more than 3,000 companies.