Filed under: Business, Utilities, Web services, Open Source
Tr.im goes community-owned, takes shot at Bit.ly
- Tr.im, the fourth most popular URL shortening service, shut down because of the insurmountable advantage its competitor, Bit.ly, gets as a result of being the default URL shrinker on Twitter.
- A couple of days later, Tr.im was back, still angry about the perceived Bit.ly monopoly, but ready to continue operations or sell to someone who would.
- According to Tr.im, Bit.ly offered Tr.im $10,000 for its domain name and all of its links. Tr.im said no to this and other reported offers.
- Meanwhile, Bit.ly joined a coalition of similar services, called 301works, to create an archive of shortlinks, in case a shutdown like Tr.im's should happen again in the future.
In his blog post announcing the community-owned model, Woodward criticizes the 301works group as a Bit.ly publicity stunt that will be ineffective in solving the dead link problem. He's quite clear that Tr.im will not be joining 301works, and that community ownership is a better way to preserve links in the future.
So, just how good at time waster games are you? Think you've got the stuff? Well, The World's Hardest Game 2.0 doesn't think you do.
Yes, amazingly, it's possible to have a sequel to a game called "The World's Hardest Game". It doesn't seem logically possible, since if the first one was actually the world's hardest, how could another one come along and share the moniker? It made me doubt the name in the first place. That is, until I tried the game.
The mechanics of the game are very simple. You are a small red square, ...
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
motang said 7:39PM on 8-17-2009
Tr.im needs to stop being a baby!
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joem said 10:18PM on 8-17-2009
Personally, I find all this amusing. I have never needed a URL shortener, and can not foresee ever needing one.
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sodapop said 3:51PM on 8-18-2009
Twitter is to blame here. They should allow basic HTML links and not count the HTML nor URL to the char. limit. It's Twitter's social responsibility to maintain the data they collect.
I made my own URL shortner because I pretty much convinced I'll keep that domain for the rest of my life. (And I have a directory of all the links)
But what are short URLs anyway? Are they really worth saving? Most links are to more permanent sources. The source is more important. While short links could measure popularity, most of the short links made are for temporary purposes. Twitter, specifically, is a notification system limited to real time SOV. At max value, some Twitter accounts are only valid as a custom/personalized index to other parts of the internet.
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