Yesterday, upon hearing that the URL shortening service Tr.im was shutting down, Bit.ly, the largest URL-shortener, stepped in with a proposal. The offer wasn’t to buy the service, but rather to propose that Bit.ly host Tr.im’s URL-mappings indefinitely, or that they join the 301works.com project, a sort of archive for shortened web links. Tr.im parent Nambu Networks has rejected that ideas, and instead wants to sell the service, Bit.ly writes today.
And that’s too bad, because while the idea wasn’t a perfect solution, it would have at least saved many of the URL’s shortened with Tr.im that are now scheduled to stop working by the end of the year. Bit.ly’s idea behind 301works is essentially to let all of the URL-shorteners bulk-upload links every week, which would then be stored on that service. “We thought this was a useful idea — something that was inexpensive to execute and important for the industry,” Bit.ly writes.
But when the idea was first proposed back in April, Tr.im and the other URL-shorteners turned it down initially. The main problem is thought to be privacy (some shortened-links are private on some services). But Bit.ly also thinks the reluctance to get on board may be related to one company ruling all of this, so it has reached out to some non-profits in the hope that they can take over.
The reason why Bit.ly wants this 301works service should be pretty clear. There’s a large uproar right now following Tr.im’s demise on whether or not anyone should actually be using URL-shorteners just in case something like this happens. Even the all-powerful Twitter-endorsed Bit.ly could go away some day, is the thought. But an archive of these links that is maintained outside any one service could help put people’s minds at ease.
Bit.ly says that using Amazon’s servers, it could have 301works up and running in a matter of weeks.
Again, this all sounds nice, but if the other guys don’t get on board, which Tr.im clearly isn’t ready to do, it’s kind of pointless. Bit.ly says that if someone does buy Tr.im and wants to use 301works, to let them know. Clearly, Bit.ly has no interest in buying the service.
[photo: flickr/russeljsmith]
The problem with URL shorteners having a “global database” is that the only value they hold is in the links they have shortened, if they’re all pooled together then the smaller services like tr.im that don’t have twitters backing would die.
The idea is great from bit.ly’s point of view, because they own the market, but for people like tr.im it wouldn’t work.
All these shortening services are the cancer of the web. They’re all single points of failure. DO NOT use them!
Personally, I refuse to click on any shortened link since I don’t know where they’re going.
Remember when FBI entrapped people by sending them links to child porn? Guess how easy it is to screw you by sending you the bit.ly, tinyurl or tr.im link.
I use a url expander and Bit.ly Preview for Firefox so I know exactly where I’m going before I go to any shortened url. I use Bit.ly and prefer their link tracking features. It’s a matter of smart computing.
How do you think a URL previewer gets the site you are previewing? While you may not be visiting it, from your ISP’s and the FBI’s perspective you most certainly did visited the website.
No doubt they might be able to see that you visited it via a trim URL and hopefully would never hold you accountable to for clicking on any URL and immediately leaving upon seeing illegal material.
luke, brian, +1
end this fad please, twitter please separate url data from message and allow full size urls
k thx
Or use a tool like the URL checker that unshortens the URL and verify it using google’s safe browsing, site advisor, etc:
http://sucuri.n...title=check-url
I don’t have much respect for these URL shorteners as companies. TinyURL was a cool little service when it came out, but since Twitter started gaining traction it’s become a fool’s gold rush. There’s just something that makes me sick about a company trying to inject itself into a conversation that it has nothing to do with and monetize by turning itself into critical infrastructure.
Since Twitter created the critical need for this type of infrastructure, I think they should just buy bit.ly outright instead of just letting the blackmail value inflate over time.
Actually in bit.ly’s blog post they said they offered to buy the service but were turned down.
I wonder if they could work out a system by which hovering over a shortened url link would show the final destination url instead of the shortened url in the browser so you would know where you are going.
http://bit.ly/2V6CFi
Patented by me.
Many URL shorteners, Bit.ly included, have “expand” methods built into their API. So yes, it’s not just doable, it’s fairly simple.
Tinyurl has had a preview page for.. ever.
This is the “reliable” bit.ly which is hosted on libya’s namespace, .ly?
supposed.ly for the cool suffix
“We thought this was a useful idea — something that was inexpensive to execute and important for the industry,” Bit.ly writes.
Lovely, there is now a real URL Shortener Industry
Psh, and I bet iPhone users are considered a “Market”.
Sure they are. I made over $100K from my iPhone app in 5 months.
@travis they are
I can’t wait for the first URL Shortening Industry Convention.
Aisle 1: Show-actual-URL vendors.
Aisle 2: Global URL repo & backup solutions.
Aisle 3: Interstitial advertising!
Aisle 4: “Feature capital” companies.
Aisle 5: Ambassadors to poor countries with no registrar.
Aisle 6: Copycats.
Hey, this is Chris from Jolt Media Group (jmg.com), parent owner of Linkbee. We are also trying to reach out to Tr.im without any success. We are in position to acquire Tr.im, but it has been impossible to get in touch with them. I question the validity of them actually shutting down. Possibly a big domainer made an offer they cant refuse to redirect all the traffic?
I imagine Nambu considers your organization spammy, as do I. They have explicitly expressed they would rather have Trim die in its entirety before turning over their data to any spammy org.
Spammy? How so? I’m confused.
WTF? Why would 301works be based on weekly bulk uploads of URLs instead of real-time? Seems so backwards. How about when a URL shortening service creates a link, just send that over to 301works at that same time behind the scenes.
Creating and storing the URLs is the easy/cheap part. Handling the clickthrough traffic is the expensive part.
Because bulk uploads are cheaper and more efficient. Why should an archive have data in real-time? Archives are for looking up historical data, not for real-time data
Ok, yeah, true, but that’s like saying you are going to buy the 93 cent cheeseburger because it is cheaper than the 99 cent cheeseburger. Both are cheap as hell.
While an week old archive would be nice, a real-time archive would be even better. Real-time exporting would be advantageous for a number of reasons:
1) If one shortening service goes down, requests could then be offloaded to another service if the proper architecture is in place.
2) When a virus/malware site explodes on one service, creating thousands of unique short urls (a common occurance), those can be detected and eliminated on all shortening services within minutes.
3) If 301works develops the capacity to support 3rd party access to the data, you’d have a collective API between all the shortening services
I could think of a dozen more reasons if I spent another 10 minutes.
Of course, these all assume there is a business behind URL shortening, which we’ve yet to see.
You can debate indefinitely whether URL shortening is good or bad, but it’s a fact of life. It’s here, now, and it’s not going away. The best way to minimize the downsides of this trend is through transparency. It’s not a bulletproof solution, but it will certainly highlight which companies have their users’ needs at heart.
As John put it in his post, “Redirect tables in their simplest form have limitations — but the internet has shown that a little bit of redundancy can go a long way.”
Today, we at Gnip reached out to the bit.ly guys to provide the engineering and funding for 301works. We’ll keep everyone posted as things develop.
Eric Marcoullier
CEO, Gnip
yeah, bit.ly wanted to have its cake and eat it too. cheap they are.
I always prefered bit.ly over tr.im. Good riddance to them.
I always preferred bit.ly over tr.im. Good riddance to them.
Is it ever good to see competition fail?
Doesn’t it strike anyone else as totally insane that we’re building technology to redirect URLs, archive those redirections, pre-expand the shortened versions, protect against spamming, all because somebody decided 140 characters meant something?
What if we just made the limit 240 characters and didn’t shorten most URLs? How hard is that?
Or how about no fucking limit and we all go home early?
To quote Ice Cube: Check yo self before you wreck yo self.
http://en.wikip...Initial_concept
“The innovation in SMS is indicated by the word Short in Short Message Service. The GSM system is optimized for telephony, since this was identified as its main application. The key idea for SMS was to use this telephony-optimized system and to transport messages on the signaling paths needed to control the telephony traffic during time periods when no signaling traffic existed. In this way unused resources in the system could be used to transport messages without additional cost. However, it was necessary to limit the length of the messages to 128 bytes (later improved to 140 bytes, or 160 7-bit characters), so that the messages could fit into the existing signaling formats. Therefore the service was named ‘Short Message Service’.”
I’m aware of the SMS underpinnings of that decision, but I think there’s some agreement that it’s turned into more of a marketing strategy/gimmick than a technical requirement since that time. I mean, I send people 140+ character SMS messages all the time and it just gets split up and reassembled, why can’t we do that here? It just strikes me as seriously not worth it to do permanent damage to the structure of the web (links) to keep the low character limit. I’m not saying no twitter, but there’s *got* to be a better way than all this.
Also, that quote cracked me up.
To further Marcoullier’s points. SMS levels the playing field in developing countries where the only deivce many have is a very simple cell phone.
Beyond that, have you ever been in an IRC channel and seen someone paste trace or debug log’s? What happens? Immediate kick.
Agreed — the whole premise is a bit ridiculous.
Here, I’ll buy it for $5,000.00 (five thousand dollars).
Seriously. I’ll throw that puppy up on a single server, using Redis or whatever as the key/value. The load will be infinitesimal on one of ServerBeach’s spiffy servers, that will cost me like $129 per month.
Only thing is, i’ll put up something like a diggbar, and place tiny ads on top (like google mail). That should allow me to recoup my $5K investment in a year or less, tops?
With all the links out there that people still follow, i’m sure there’s some traffic in it. And it runs itself, I don’t need to babysit anything, since the Redis key/value store can withstand insane amounts of hits.
Seriously, Nambu has interest in continuing their company and NOT being known for letting what they started go to shit.
At least some people have class…
a directory for short links, really? whose bright idea was it. seriously, i like twitter, but don’t let it fuck up the web
One thing I don’t understand about all of you short-url snobs/geeks/whatever (the ones that say “I used tr.im rather than bit.ly because it saved one character … I mean, really?) – why don’t you type www. instead of http:// ? It’s a whole three characters less!
I meant of course www(dot) – Wordpress added the http://
It actually adds 4 extra characters.
And yes, i hate WWW. because its unneeded characters… I also despise servers which require www. :p the moron webhost should fix them lol.
i almost started a url shortening service yesterday, but then i was like: nah.
I threw together a basic script just to see if i could do it :/ http://zurl.in twas a bit of fun and always interesting to look at the stats etc for that friends do :p
(Yea, I know its suspended at the moment I am working on the servers lol)
First announce that your product has failed in the marketplace and you are shutting it down, than announce that you want to sell it?
I am confused.
Just get your own URL shortener. I have had PHPurl out since beginning of this year and it has ben increasingly popular to just have your own instead of pimp off someone elses bandwidth because they want to make money.
Whether this was a marketing ploy or not, Tr.im blogged on August 11th that they basically changed their mind.
Just created http://z2z.ca (still needs some touches, but it’s shortening), a URL shortening service. I love the concept of having a directory of short URLs, this will mean that short URLs will not be lost if the provider decided to shut down the service.
This blog post is like reporting on what Microsoft is doing by asking Apple instead of Microsoft. This sort of reporting wouldn’t fly in a newspaper.
Take a look at tr.im’s side of the story:
http://blog.tr....community-owned