In a remarkable turnaround, URL shortening service tr.im was resurrected after having the plug pulled – seemingly for the last time – just a few days ago. The operators, Nambu, cite “popular response, and the countless public and private appeals … received to keep tr.im alive” as the reason for the restoration and intend to “keep tr.im operating going forward, indefinitely”.
I always liked tr.im for it’s speed and simplicity, and was disappointed to see the service close, but I have mixed feelings about its resurrection. The suddenness of the shutdown has left a bad taste and there is a great deal of uncertainty about what will happen to tr.im in the future.
Nambu stated that they are still looking to “transition [tr.im] to another party”, so they would appear to have no desire to develop or hold on to the service in the long term. I can’t help but wonder how long they will keep the lights on once the ego massage of the “popular response” has faded and no buyer is forthcoming.
Looking at it clinically though, whatever happens to tr.im down the road doesn’t affect me all that much! I only use URL shorteners to publicise blog posts on Twitter, so the short URLs are essentially throwaway and the demise of any URL provider amounts to a minor inconvenience. Furthermore, the click statistics tr.im gathers are more of a “nice to have” than a killer feature as I (naturally) have full analytics set up on the blogs in any case.
So if tr.im’s existence (or lack of it) doesn’t affect me, I might as well have all my short URLs in one place. With that in mind, I’m going back to tr.im.
At least for a while.
John Girvin is an experienced a software engineer and web developer based in Belfast, Northern Ireland. He draws on over 14 years of hard won, real world experience of different projects, clients and working environments.
John is currently working with the Art Technology Group (ATG), developing J2EE based, market leading e-commerce technology.
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