Yesterday, URL shortener tr.im announced that they’re shutting down.

Why? What do you need to know about it? What’s going to happen as bit.ly swoops in to the (attempted) rescue? Are we too dependent on services like tr.im to tie the social Web together?

Ten links to answer your questions:

tr.im R.I.P.
tr.im | August 9, 2009
Ryan Sholin says: From tr.im’s official blog post on their demise: “And, the data that tr.im generates — the hottest links that people are sharing right now — is all well and good, but everyone has this data. tr.im gets hit by countless bots every day farming this data to create and operate websites such as tweetmeme.com. So, *everyone* has this data, meaning it is basically worthless *by itself* to base a business on (as bit.ly and others are attempting to do) at least in our humble opinions.”

Tr.im URL Shortener Shuts Down; Short Links to Die?
Ryan Sholin says: tr.im dies, says there’s no way to monetize URL shortening. Well, of course not, if that’s all you do. The first-wave URL shorteners will be replaced by shorteners that are just secondary features of other apps. See also: Diggbar, Su.pr, HootSuite, etc.

zseward: What’s that expression? You never want to outlive your URL shortener http://tr.im
Ryan Sholin says: Zach Seward posted one of the first tweets I’ve been able to find noting tr.im’s untimely demise.

URL shortener Tr.im’s demise: Social web is built on house of cards
VentureBeat | August 10, 2009
Ryan Sholin says: Matt Marshall weighs in: “In other words, the rules of the social web are still being made up on the fly, and if you run a Web business, or are dependent on the Web for traffic, you should beware of the risk in relying on things like URL shorteners. One trick: Build your own URL shortening service.”

jperras: Seems http://tr.im is shutting down. Guess it’s time to switch to some other URL shortener & hope that it doesn’t go the same way.

Twitter’s platform shortcomings
Scobleizer | August 10, 2009
Ryan Sholin says: Robert Scoble enumerates Twitter’s shortcomings on the occasion of tr.im’s collapse: “5. Twitter has built a system that relies on a third party for functionality. Even now, if we use bit.ly links like Twitter recommends, there’s no guarantee that Twitter will keep those links working in the future if Bit.ly’s investors decide it can’t make money. Since money has NOT started flowing through the Twitter system yet we’re all wondering just how Bit.ly will make money…”

Bit.ly Wants To Make Money With A News Service; But Will Anyone Pay For It?
paidContent.org | July 31, 2009
Ryan Sholin says: Tameka Kee at PaidContent wrote this about bit.ly just a few days ago: “We’ve suggested a premium subscription service, where media companies and other heavy users would pay for advanced analytics, since bit.ly currently lets people track the number of clicks their links get and where their traffic’s coming from for free. In an interview with Wired, bit.ly General Manager Andrew Cohen acknowledged that the startup was thinking about charging for more robust data access, but also about creating a real-time news service that tracked breaking and popular stories.”

301working
bit.ly blog | August 10, 2009
Ryan Sholin says: This bit.ly response offers to archive all shortened URLs via “a wayback machine-like approach.” (Note the privacy concerns.)

An Oversized Ruckus About Tiny Web Addresses: Bit.ly’s Bigfoot Offer to the Rest of the Business
All Things Digital | August 10, 2009
Ryan Sholin says: Peter Kafka on bit.ly’s proposed solution to play Internet Archive for short URLs: “To me, that sounds a bit like a mafia don shaking his head a tad wistfully after hearing that one his old rivals got bumped off, then sending a big bouquet to the funeral. And I think that the tr.im team, as well as some of bit.ly’s other competitors, may take it in the same vein.”

Shorten this
zeldman.com | August 10, 2009
Ryan Sholin says: Zeldman on URL shorteners: “Rolling your own mini-URLs lessens the chance that your carefully cultivated links will rot if the third-party URL shortening site goes down or goes out of business, as is happening to tr.im, a URL shortener that is pulling the plug because it could neither monetize nor sell its service.” (Note the link to an excellent WordPress plugin for short URLs deep in this post.)

VIDEO: tr.im – the best URL shortener!?

YouTube | August 10, 2009
Ryan Sholin says: A three-month-old screencast review of tr.im’s features, which may serve as a useful archive of what the service offered as its users look for a substitute.

[Note: The links in this post were curated with Publish2.]

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