In an interview with Wired magazine, Bit.ly's general manager Andrew Cohen, said the company is branching out to offer a paid-for data and analytics service for marketers and a subscription based news service.
A Bit.ly news-feed would allow the company to crowdsource the internet to seek out up coming trends before the major media outlets, which it could then charge users to access the information.
It would likely resemble Twitter's own Trending Topics list, but would rank the popularity of individual links, instead of keywords.
Cohen told Wired: "Looking at that volume of data, we can see the most interesting and the most important content that is being shared across the whole of the real-time web."
He said Bit.ly is beginning to refine its capabilities to be able to pinpoint upcoming stories.
The company also has plans to allow marketers to gather deep data and analytics from the links they put through the service.
Bit.ly offers basic feedback information, which tells users how often their link has been click and how many times it's been re-tweeted on Twitter.
Cohen said the company would expand on those tools to the point where marketers would be willing to pay for them.
He said: "What we see are people, and marketers, coming to Bit.ly and using it almost as an ad server -- running campaigns on Twitter, but becoming interested in the ROI on those campaigns."
There are a number of URL shortening services available for use, which shorten long web addresses into compact URLs, primarily for use in Twitter, but Bit.ly is one of the most widely used.
Rumours have surfaced lately that Twitter is planning on acquiring Bit.ly, which recently raised $2m in funding. Both parties have declined to comment on the rumours.
Bit.ly said it processes billions of links every month, but has yet to find a platform to generate revenue. The company, along with Twitter, has outright refused the option of selling ads along side links, or even on its website.