Mashable - The Social Media Guide - Latest Comments in Tr.im URL Shortener Shuts Down; Short Links to Die?

Re: Tr.im URL Shortener Shuts Down; Short Links to Die?

Rick — Thu, 10 Sep 2009 20:30:59 -0000

Its sad to see trim go :( I found this new URL shortener that allows the user to shorten multiple urls at a time and some other unique features. its the only one i use right now. http://myurlz.com

Re: Tr.im URL Shortener Shuts Down; Short Links to Die?

henrik — Sun, 16 Aug 2009 21:50:45 -0000

probably not the first one to ask: but why isn't url shortening integrated in the twitter format itself, i.e. full urls visually shortened?

Re: Tr.im URL Shortener Shuts Down; Short Links to Die?

Xavier — Mon, 10 Aug 2009 12:21:42 -0000

Twitter should provide is own url shortener. That would be great.

Re: Tr.im URL Shortener Shuts Down; Short Links to Die?

kennedy — Mon, 10 Aug 2009 12:12:09 -0000

What if bit.ly or TinyUrl buys/merges their stuff together so they have a larger mass of URLS?? this way all links are not dead, and whoever buys it will increase their user counts

Re: Tr.im URL Shortener Shuts Down; Short Links to Die?

Meridian — Mon, 10 Aug 2009 09:28:50 -0000

No, they're not correct. They're bitter. There's a difference. There's a way to monetize everything. They just didn't figure it out. They wanted the quick buyout and it's not 1999 anymore.

Re: Tr.im URL Shortener Shuts Down; Short Links to Die?

Premium wordpress themes — Mon, 10 Aug 2009 09:20:54 -0000

That's bad. I started using it few months back.

Re: Tr.im URL Shortener Shuts Down; Short Links to Die?

anonymous — Mon, 10 Aug 2009 07:28:37 -0000

Survival of the fittest was bound to happen in the Short URL segment. I expect few more to die. For a short URL service to succeed you need a constant flow of traffic and extremely low costs.

Re: Tr.im URL Shortener Shuts Down; Short Links to Die?

Daina Thomas — Mon, 10 Aug 2009 07:15:34 -0000

I completely agree with you .. that's very true ....

Re: Tr.im URL Shortener Shuts Down; Short Links to Die?

Anthony Mitchell — Mon, 10 Aug 2009 07:08:52 -0000

Tr.im’s primary monetization option is to sell real-time traffic intelligence to advertisers.

In planning for an online ad campaign, it used to be that ad managers could take a leisurely three or four weeks to gradually ramp up, find the right keywords, test ad-text combinations, and increase their spend in a conservative manner.

Now that huge amounts of traffic are coming from social media (over 20% of TechCrunch’s 7 million monthly uniques) and with URL shortners used for a significant amount of that traffic, Tr.im has access to extremely valuable market intelligence. The payoffs for advertisers? Better access to consumers, better ROI, instant results, product placement at strategic moments and the exploitation of unique opportunities.

As someone who does a lot of valuations of online assets, I’d value Tr.im at roughly $4.5 million to $7.5 million.

The challenge with domain-centric asset valuations, particularly where considerable unmonetized traffic volumes are concerned, is that three quarters of the strategic transactions are private. Sometimes we find out about a price a year or more after the transaction, as in the case of Clothes.com, which sold for 4.9 million in 2008 to Zappos but was only disclosed after Zappos was subsequently acquired by Amazon.

A similar sale at a greater valuation came from TrafficZ’s acquisition of NameIntelligence (NI), which runs DomainTools. That acquisition is currently being litigated over representations and warrants – primarily those made by the seller, but the post-litigation valuation is likely to exceed Clothes.com.

Unlike NI, Tr.im owns a big piece of the Internet through the traffic volume they support. Bigger than Kevin Ham and Frank Schilling? If not now, then soon. What makes Tr.im’s volumes important is that it represents hot traffic, trending traffic.

Competitors to Tr.im suffer from weak TLDs/CCs. Anyone care to litigate an intellectual property dispute in Libya? Or better yet, India – which does not follow UDRP and where substantial punitive awards are increasingly commonplace.

Tr.im was the best service of its type, in part because users enjoyed dedicated URLs and because of the statistical tools. It’s too bad they didn’t communicate with their user base about their interest in selling the service before shutting it down.

First-time sellers (like first-time buyers) often don’t know how to work with investment bankers and are reluctant to do so. They don’t understand deal steps or the psychological aspects of strategic transactions and consequently fall victim to self-inflicted pitfalls. Sometimes they stumble by selecting niche-market bankers or by prematurely setting their sights on a short list of preferred buyers or sellers. It’s a movie we’ve seen before. And have just seen again.

Re: Tr.im URL Shortener Shuts Down; Short Links to Die?

Brands-and-Jingles — Mon, 10 Aug 2009 06:56:17 -0000

A propos, shortenings: Jimmi Choo chose Cyrillic two letters чу.com.

The current trend is to have a proprietary one - the shorter the better.

Read some research on the domain length in the white paper: http://Brands-and-Jingles.c...

Re: Tr.im URL Shortener Shuts Down; Short Links to Die?

Steave — Mon, 10 Aug 2009 05:27:45 -0000

Shaquille O'Neal works his magic once again presenting the world with Mega entertainment! He has lauched a new social network which will put other social networks to shame!.

Re: Tr.im URL Shortener Shuts Down; Short Links to Die?

Sha — Mon, 10 Aug 2009 05:07:48 -0000

It's so sad to hear that tr.im is closing down. It's the only URL shortening service I use. Being a designer myself, I liked the user interface and found it to be both eye-catching and user-friendly. IMHO it's far far better than what bit.ly has to offer. Plus, it's one character short in length!!! I hope some reputable company buys it soon.

Re: Tr.im URL Shortener Shuts Down; Short Links to Die?

Snake — Mon, 10 Aug 2009 05:03:38 -0000

ffffffffffff

I love(d) tr.im. Bit.ly just isn't the same. :(

However, their goodbye message sounds a lot like, "I'm taking my legos and going home." I hope someone makes sure all the tr.im links keep going where they should.

Re: Tr.im URL Shortener Shuts Down; Short Links to Die?

Chris Murray — Mon, 10 Aug 2009 04:50:42 -0000

This is a shame, but I have never agreed with URL shortening. Despite undermining good work to make URLS more readable and accessible they are a perfect breeding ground for spam, virus's, phishing etc etc.

ps. Use free services knowing that they could shut down at any time. Nothing is forever! ;0)

Re: Tr.im URL Shortener Shuts Down; Short Links to Die?

Chris Clayton — Mon, 10 Aug 2009 04:03:27 -0000

if it wasnt reliable then what are you complaining for? tr.im never put a gun to your head and told you to use their service did they? tr.im never promised that they will be around for 94 years did they?

Sure, if you want to call them quitters then go ahead but don't say crap like "May the creators get what they deserve NOTHING!" - they put alot of energy into the service, they couldn't risk keeping the service alive and then loosing all THEIR money, especially in a time like this.

bandwidth costs money... money they don't have. personally, i would prefer they shut it down than risk their own life by using their own money (the same money they use to buy their dinner tonight, the same money they use to keep a roof over their head)

Oh and by the way, before you criticize their spelling please re-check your comment.
I quote, What the heck is "by the by"?

... a loser is someone who doesnt try... they tried harder than you... loser!

thanks for reading... sweet dreams!

Re: Tr.im URL Shortener Shuts Down; Short Links to Die?

ARB4 — Mon, 10 Aug 2009 01:43:42 -0000

bit.ly was a better service.

tr.im was a better name.

Re: Tr.im URL Shortener Shuts Down; Short Links to Die?

DD — Mon, 10 Aug 2009 01:17:49 -0000

I fully agree with this. I recently started using a WP plugin that provides friendly short links to use on Twitter, that way if any URL service shuts down, my own links are still in tact. I use Bit.ly for linking news stories etc so yes the burden is on each site owner to provide their own solution. That is, I believe, the best approach to ensure link life. Sorry to hear of Tr.im. I admit it's the best branded name out of most of them and seemed to have many features. I'd imagine somebody would want to save it.

Re: Tr.im URL Shortener Shuts Down; Short Links to Die?

Dan Brookins — Mon, 10 Aug 2009 00:50:34 -0000

Well, companies like tr.im or bit.ly have no barrier to entry, they just do not have any technology. Once can replicate these companies in just a day. So, the demise of tr.im brings a valuable lesson that a startup should have some technology behind it and a business model. I hardly see such companies these days .. Twitter apps can also be innovative like the one I am big fan of -- BoilingPage (http://www.boilingpage.com) that shows the hot things among people, like Hot Webpages, Hot Movies, Hot Music, Hot Games, Hot Books, Hot TV shows and more. Am really looking forward to seeing more like this ..

Re: Tr.im URL Shortener Shuts Down; Short Links to Die?

Michael Bauser — Sun, 09 Aug 2009 23:57:49 -0000

Hosting shortened links on the core domain is a bad idea; it increased the chances of a namespace collision between the automatically-generated URIs and the non-random URIs.

Re: Tr.im URL Shortener Shuts Down; Short Links to Die?

Stajo — Sun, 09 Aug 2009 23:47:27 -0000

I used trim. Good service.

Re: Tr.im URL Shortener Shuts Down; Short Links to Die?

Craig McGill — Sun, 09 Aug 2009 22:39:02 -0000

Article states: "There is just too much value in those links for there to be no bidders." But is there? There is only value for the people going to the link. It's not as if extra advertising can be added in to justify the short URL. Perhaps the problem has been making the URLs free to start with...

Re: Tr.im URL Shortener Shuts Down; Short Links to Die?

BrakeItUp — Sun, 09 Aug 2009 22:29:16 -0000

Nobody's noticed the problem of infinite loops with url shorteners?
http://uurl.in/yanarp

Re: Tr.im URL Shortener Shuts Down; Short Links to Die?

Paul Wackerow — Sun, 09 Aug 2009 21:56:14 -0000

I like what Digg has done with their own shortened links. I would love to see more news sites, blogs and commonly tweeted websites to start hosting their own shortened links, if not by means of a secondary condensed domain at least by means of using their current domain and utilizing the root directory to redirect to their pages (such as mashable.com/aB42g, which is of course a false link at the moment).

This way if a particular site shuts down and dies, the only "broken links" will be there own anyway.

Re: Tr.im URL Shortener Shuts Down; Short Links to Die?

C. Dasent — Sun, 09 Aug 2009 21:48:35 -0000

Shaquille O'Neal works his magic once again presenting the world with Mega entertainment! He has lauched a new social network which will put other social networks to shame!
http://squidoo.com/shaquill...

Re: Tr.im URL Shortener Shuts Down; Short Links to Die?

C. Dasent — Sun, 09 Aug 2009 21:44:45 -0000

Shaquille O'Neal works his magic once again presenting the world with Mega entertainment! He has lauched a new social network which will put other social networks to shame!