Scripting News - Latest Comments in tr.im announces shutdown (Scripting News)

Re: tr.im announces shutdown (Scripting News)

Batman — Thu, 13 Aug 2009 17:54:31 -0000

Excellent point, as I'm heavily invested in bit.ly links right now....

Re: tr.im announces shutdown (Scripting News)

Batman — Thu, 13 Aug 2009 17:53:26 -0000

Clearly, The Law!!!™ Has claimed another victim....

Re: tr.im announces shutdown (Scripting News)

Miguel — Tue, 11 Aug 2009 11:43:23 -0000

http://u.nu has been around a while longer, also with a 3-character domain name. After the slash it's currently up to 4 characters, though at the current rate it's going to hit 5 within a few weeks.

Re: tr.im announces shutdown (Scripting News)

robotchampion — Mon, 10 Aug 2009 21:07:17 -0000

so if i switch to bit.ly does that mean im selling out?

Re: tr.im announces shutdown (Scripting News)

Joe Moreno — Mon, 10 Aug 2009 19:07:14 -0000

At Adjix, we were concerned about our links breaking for any reason (such as going out of business or our severs going down). For this reason, we've implemented each redirect as an HTML page and, in the event of catastrophe, we can fallback to Amazon's S3 which would only cost a few dollars/month:
http://www.scripting.com/st...

Re: tr.im announces shutdown (Scripting News)

AAfter Search — Mon, 10 Aug 2009 15:44:52 -0000

I also wonder if Libya [for .ly ] changes its policy about domain ownership, can that affect bit.ly or other services with cute domain name?

Re: tr.im announces shutdown (Scripting News)

geeknews — Mon, 10 Aug 2009 11:59:40 -0000

Dave

This is one of the reasons I run my own that I control. The web based application is called Shorty. While it is not perfect and not as slick, at least I know the domains I use for it will not go offline. The key here is people that really count on URL shortners go out and buy there own short url, and host it them selves it does not need to be something cute. I run it on a spare server I have along with a bunch of other domains.

Re: tr.im announces shutdown (Scripting News)

Jennifer Van Grove — Mon, 10 Aug 2009 11:20:28 -0000

Dave, Ben wrote on Tr.im and URL shorteners yesterday: http://mashable.com/2009/08...

Re: tr.im announces shutdown (Scripting News)

moon — Mon, 10 Aug 2009 09:56:20 -0000

Nambu is a Social Messaging Trainwreck and the only way they can come-up with to make money from Twitter is a tr.im extortion play

Re: tr.im announces shutdown (Scripting News)

peteaustin — Mon, 10 Aug 2009 07:15:52 -0000

@scoble. Twitter is not the whole market for short URLs -think instant messaging, image boards, texts - so there's a possible purpose. The existing tr.im twitter business may have a negative worth to Rackspace, because of the need to support existing URLs, and because Rackspace would lose reputation if it took the obvious course and added paid adverts. So any decision to buy tr.im depends on whether the code and documentation is high quality. Suggest reviewing under NDA.

Re: tr.im announces shutdown (Scripting News)

playerx — Mon, 10 Aug 2009 07:08:31 -0000

Also "no chance to succeed as success would be defined in this area"
Who really defined success in this area? Who here as actually succeeded? What is the defining point of success? I would have to say no one has this answer. If they say they do, it's all about the level of usury their accountant is capable of. There isn't anything here which wasn't here before. People communicated using their computer or in short messages using IRC or Instant Messenger clients long before.

Re: tr.im announces shutdown (Scripting News)

playerx — Mon, 10 Aug 2009 07:02:35 -0000

tinyurl.com survives quite well.
been here before twitter.
my guess will be here after twitter.

Re: tr.im announces shutdown (Scripting News)

AlexSchleber — Mon, 10 Aug 2009 04:32:42 -0000

Dave, here is a simple "Roll your own" solution using Wordpress: http://3on.us/diy-tinyurl

Re: tr.im announces shutdown (Scripting News)

Bob Smooper — Mon, 10 Aug 2009 04:21:18 -0000

URL Shortening is silly because they introduce an extra point of failure. The destination server could be the most stable in the world, but if the URL Shortening website is down, you will never arrive there anyway.

Re: tr.im announces shutdown (Scripting News)

Scobleizer — Mon, 10 Aug 2009 03:36:35 -0000

Dave, I just wrote about Twitter's Platform Shortcomings here: http://scobleizer.com/2009/...

Re: tr.im announces shutdown (Scripting News)

Eric Woodward — Mon, 10 Aug 2009 02:43:24 -0000

I am really not sure what more I can offer here. tr.im costs about $2,500 in raw server costs per month to operate as currently configured because of the current volume, which will now start to drop off. The issue is more about having no chance to succeed as success would be defined in this area, and being distracted from ventures where inside connections don't determine success or failure, which they do on Twitter.

Re: tr.im announces shutdown (Scripting News)

vrypan — Mon, 10 Aug 2009 02:39:29 -0000

It might be worth having a look at http://urlborg.com/ (using AppEngine). User accounts (allowing to get a full list of your links), optional (per user) url preview, and custom domains.

Re: tr.im announces shutdown (Scripting News)

dave — Mon, 10 Aug 2009 02:33:18 -0000

Why don't you tell us what the realities are -- how much money does it cost
to continue to operate tr.im. You use qualitative terms in your blog post,
but you don't say what it would take to keep it running. I suggest you don't
do this privately, you've been very public, and that can be a good thing. As
you can see from the response it has struck a nerve.

Also, if you don't mind, tell us what it would cost to get it into an
open-sourceable form.

Eric we need a reliable service that we can be sure will be there for the
future, at least until Twitter does something to obviate the need for URL
shorteners. It's totally conceivable that tr.im could be that service.

Re: tr.im announces shutdown (Scripting News)

Paul Papadimitriou — Mon, 10 Aug 2009 02:16:52 -0000

Who says there shall be only one? My take is that either Twitter buys one and restrict it's web service to this one (as with bit.ly now), tying up it's own future with a URL shortener or it opens up completely and lets users choose which one to use, through the settings (URL shorteners could be authorized via an API).
Everybody deserves a shot, let the competition decide of the winner.

Re: tr.im announces shutdown (Scripting News)

Eric Woodward — Mon, 10 Aug 2009 02:12:40 -0000

We would have continued to develop and invest in tr.im if this option existed, but it doesn't, and I hear no talk of it anywhere. We are doing what we can here, maintaining all links. That December deadline can always be extended if need be.

Re: tr.im announces shutdown (Scripting News)

dave — Mon, 10 Aug 2009 02:10:14 -0000

FF doesn't nor should they expand the links. They just display the full link
in the text of the message so the user can see in advance where they go.

As a user I wouldn't mind if Rackspace took it over, but I would mind if
other companies did.

This whole thing is a mess, but it's a good mess to have, right now, because
it raises other big issues that we should deal with.

For example, how do you know FriendFeed won't pull the plug on all the
content we're putting there? It strikes me as exactly the kind of thing they
would do, if it suited them.

Scoble, you're in a position to lead users here, I hope you do. And it's
good that you're not on the SUL so you don't have to worry about pissing off
Twitter. A lot of insiders in the tech business are too scared to say
anything they might not like.

Re: tr.im announces shutdown (Scripting News)

sam — Mon, 10 Aug 2009 02:08:38 -0000

this is my view about the whole tr.im thing, http://ff.im/6nocf not from me but a great point

Re: tr.im announces shutdown (Scripting News)

dave — Mon, 10 Aug 2009 02:06:18 -0000

Think about it -- that's not what matters. What matters is a situation like
the one with tr.im, where the service goes away permanently and takes all
its links with it.

Re: tr.im announces shutdown (Scripting News)

Scobleizer — Mon, 10 Aug 2009 02:05:10 -0000

Eric, tomorrow I will be meeting with executives from Rackspace. Is saving tr.im something that is possible? Or, even, is saving current links something that is possible? I'm not saying that Rackspace is interested, but I have a ton of links done in tr.im and I would like to make sure they continue to work. By the way, I am pretty sure that FriendFeed has expanded all of the tr.im links, so that's one big help there since that's my main real time search engine these days. Anyway, if you're interested, please send me email at scobleizer@gmail.com or call me at +1-425-205-1921

Re: tr.im announces shutdown (Scripting News)

dave — Mon, 10 Aug 2009 02:00:42 -0000

And here's why the Suggested Users List is so bad -- this question should be asked by the leading tech blogs, TechCrunch, GigaOm, Mashable, ReadWriteWeb -- but won't be -- because they're "inside" and don't want to lose their advantage.

Further we were told that mainstream publications like the NYT and Guardian wouldn't be influenced by their position on the SUL, so I expect to see this issue raised there.