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Google's URL shortener Goo.gl has launched its open service and companion website to the public this afternoon. The service looks a whole lot like upstart innovator Bit.ly.

"I guess Oscar Wilde was right, imitation is the most sincere form of flattery," Bit.ly's John Borthwick told us in response. "They took all the basic features and copied from bit.ly." That is true for the user interface, but in the larger context of both companies' offerings, there are significant differences.

In our new series about product innovation, we're exploring how cutting edge Internet products are created. Yesterday we wrote about the design philosophy of John Borthwick, the CEO and co-founder of Betaworks. His company operates some of the leading real-time web products: Bit.ly (link shortener), TweetDeck (desktop Twitter client), SocialFlow (a social messaging service) and Chartbeat (real-time analytics service).

In part 2 of the Borthwick interview, we look closely at the evolution of one of Betaworks' products: Chartbeat. And you don't necessarily need to be an entrepreneur to read this. Anyone who is interested in understanding - and utilizing - social media trends will glean a lot from John Borthwick's insights below.

Continuing our series on product innovation and the people driving it, this week I spoke with the CEO and co-founder of Betaworks: John Borthwick. If you're unfamiliar with the name Betaworks, you will recognize the products under its umbrella: Bit.ly (the leading link shortener), TweetDeck (desktop Twitter client), Chartbeat (real-time analytics service) and SocialFlow (a social messaging service). As well as growing companies, Betaworks is a seed-stage investor in a range of real-time web companies - such as Tumblr, Twitterfeed, Superfeedr and Songkick.

In this two-part post, we give an overview of John Borthwick's product development philosophy. Then in part 2, to be published tomorrow, we will outline the evolution of one of Betaworks' products: Chartbeat.

In late October, after Bit.ly had firmly established itself as Twitter's service of choice, it looked like URL shortener service Cligs would close down. As of today, the company will see a new management team as social bookmarking service Mister Wong has agreed to acquire it for an undisclosed sum.

Bit.ly, the reigning king of Twitter's short URL service is taking a good hard look at malware. In a blog post published earlier today, the company announced a partnership with three security giants to beef up protection for the millions of Bit.ly short links whizzing through Facebook and Twitter every month. The company will incorporate Verisign's iDefense IP reputation service, WebSense's ThreatSeeker Cloud Service and Sophos' Web Alert Services.

Often described as "crowd sourced television", online community site Redux is quickly becoming the most addictive entertainment experience on the web. With this morning's announcement of Twitter and Facebook integration, it looks like the community's content is about to increase tenfold. Like many other sites, users can import their Twitter and Facebook streams into their profile feeds; however, unlike other social feature integrations, there's a catch. Rather than simply spitting out a stream of text with bit.ly links, the service converts URLS into video thumbnails and site previews. This conversion is sure to improve Twitter and Facebook-based discovery.

All the recent talk about the future of tr.im and giving up control over our links on Twitter to third parties made us look into alternative solutions for shortening our links over the last few weeks. While there aren't too many alternatives to using hosted services for short links, we did come across two self-hosted solutions that you can install on your own hosting account: z.ips.me and Shorty. Both have some pros and cons, but they do give you total control over your short links.

The list of URL shorteners just got shorter.
According to a blog post by Nambu, the company is shutting its doors on URL shortening tool, Tr.im. After a number of attempts to sell the service, no companies in the Twitter space stepped forward to purchase and operate it in its existing form. Says the company, "There is no way for us to monetize URL shortening -- users won't pay for it -- and we just can't justify further development since Twitter has all but annointed bit.ly the market winner."