I honestly had never heard of it until today. I view a URL-shortening service as more of a hobby/side project than as a good business. Many people build them as weekend projects or use them as a "hello world" for learning a new web framework. There are literally hundreds of these services. I also dislike the very idea of URL shorteners because 1) if one goes down, then all of a sudden there are thousands of broken links, even though the page still exists and 2) I like seeing the domain name of the site I'm going to be visiting.
I've never used tr.im, but I have read that bit.ly's strength was that it was marketed as a "trend management and metrics" platform and provided some valuable data/stats/graphs showing what people were interested in based on the links they were clicking. On Mon, Aug 10, 2009 at 10:39 AM, Louis Orenstein <[email protected]>wrote: > > As we all know, tr.im is about to close up shop, and it seems people are > a little sad to see it go. > > I'm curious if people are sad about tr.im going away more for nostalgic > reasons, or are there some technical (or other) benefits that they > offered over bit.ly (or other URL shorteners for that matter) > > Tr.im's site says that there was no way for them to monetize URL > shortening since users won't pay for it. That seems like something they > should have known going in, and while they might not have the money or > time to investigate other business models it almost sounds like they > threw all of their eggs into one of two baskets: (a) get users to pay > for their url shortening (and associated stats) (b) get acquired by > another company. Neither of them is working out, but did they have a > backup/fallback plan? What would one look like? > > Did Twitter pick bit.ly just randomly out of a hat? It's definitely > true that in markets you don't always have the superior product winning > the biggest market share, but if tr.im really was a much better offering > than bit.ly I would think they would be able to figure out another way > to monetize... but maybe bit.ly always had the "good ol boys club" > advantage since I believe I read they have some high-profile investors > who may themselves have the ability to influence the market's decisions. > > Anyone care to discuss / share / enlighten ? > > > > -- Larry Kubin --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ Our Web site: http://www.RefreshAustin.org/ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Refresh Austin" group. [ Posting ] To post to this group, send email to [email protected] Job-related postings should follow http://tr.im/refreshaustinjobspolicy We do not accept job posts from recruiters. [ Unsubscribe ] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected] [ More Info ] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/Refresh-Austin -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
