Bre.ad Offers Promotional Url Shortening

If you follow all things Lady Gaga, you may have heard about her investment in social networking platform called the Backplane. It's a project spearheaded by her business manager Troy Carter who's also involved in url shortener Bre.ad that displays a 5 second "billboard" between clicking the link and going to the intended site. As with Visibli, another service that adds an additional dimension to url shorteners, Bre.ad has potential as a music marketing device. First, a video overview:

What is Bre.ad? from Bre.ad on Vimeo.

What is Bre.ad?

From the video above you can see that Bre.ad is basically an url shortener that detours you to a message and image on the Bre.ad site for a few seconds before taking you to the intended destination. If you click on the image, that takes you to a new window while the intended destination opens in the original window.

Bre.ad is primarily being used by a variety of brands, including Lady Gaga and Britney Spears, for promotional purposes. I have mixed feelings about such a device because I'm maxed out on stuff I'm not looking for being jammed in and around and over other stuff that I am looking for. But the intervention lasts only 5 seconds and it would not surprise me at all if they get a good response. Don't forget that many complain about popups but they continue to be used because people click on them more than on regular ads.

That said, the basic service is free and the plan is to take the freemium route by offering additional paid services for folks who want more. Bre.ad might be worth a look if you're always linking out to other people's work and want something out of it beyond a curator's role.

I found out about Bre.ad through initial coverage of the news about Backplane, a "platform meant to power online communities around specific interests, like musicians and sports teams, and to integrate feeds from Facebook, Twitter and other sites." Sounds like Troy Carter's going to be a force to be reckoned with and may well help a few musicians besides Lady Gaga along the way.

Hypebot contributor Clyde Smith is a freelance writer and blogger. Flux Research is his business writing hub and All World Dance: World Dance News is his primary web project.