DISQUS

redwall_hp · 4 months ago

I highly suggest selling the service (the domain, the code, the data, everything) to someone so the service doesn't cease to exist, thus avoiding the major link-rot problem that will otherwise occur.

Mark Guadalupe · 4 months ago

as I see it, this might be the goal, it is actually a great way of selling it ...desperately maybe?

sildenafil · 3 months ago

I agree with you Mark, but it is not the only way to do it...

Bear Down · 4 months ago

Everybody could just use http://beardown.ca/ts to shorten links instead...

Jim Manico · 4 months ago

The following URL:

http://cnn.com

was shortened from 14 characters to 24 characters:

http://beardown.ca/ts/ae
[ Open in new window ]

Bear Down · 4 months ago

Why would you try to shorten cnn.com in the first place? even tr.im couldn't make that shorter. Numbskull.

Miguel · 3 months ago

I guess Beardown saved up all that money it saved by not finding a short URL, and used it to hire top-notch PR people to gladhand the forums.

LouCypher · 4 months ago

Agreed with redwall_hp. At least the domain, link database and users' accounts.

kennethjung · 4 months ago

It is mentioned on their official website that no company is willing to buy tr.im even for a small amount and as URL Shortening servers are taking up large amount of their revenue, they are discontinuing the service.

jakk6 · 4 months ago

If its any consolation, your service was absolutely top notch, and far, far superior to the competition. Take this competitive spirit and understanding of what users really want to whatever future projects you take on and I'm sure you will be as successful as tr.im should have been.

andiyana · 4 months ago

Absolutely agreed. tr.im was the very best.

joshie · 4 months ago

agreed; i found out about tr.im after using bit.ly for a while, and never looked back...and now i have to :(
tr.im rocks, and so do you!

Philip Turpin · 4 months ago

same here - although I'm loathed to go back to bit.ly

peter696969 · 4 weeks ago

I fully disagree, I preferred is.gd and it is more reliable with excellent apps for Mozilla and so forth. I can see that going forever as the api development is top notch and the company has good backing which will hopefully ensure longevity for the site.

GaroldStone · 4 months ago

TR.IM was the better service overall and a better domain name that was very easy to communicate verbally (etc.) -- even people who didn't know about URL shortening GOT IT that a long URL had been TR.IMmed.

One of the best TR.IM features was the list of our own TR.IM URLS -- which tinyurl.com does not provide

Please consider a transition period when we users can log into our accounts JUST to save/print/copy out our list of TR.IM URLs so we can prepare for the end of redirection to avoid otherwise inevitable link rot affecting our readers.

Thanks

playerx · 4 months ago

#short #URL #HELL Can we get an export of our DATA, eg. which tr.im urls goto what fullsize URLS?

So that I can rewrite the thousands of links in my blog which point to tr.im soon to be nowhere.

James Roper · 4 months ago

Why do you have thousands of tr.im links in your blog? Are your blog posts limited to 140 characters? Do you pay per byte? When Eric said it wasn't designed to be used in that way, he was assuming the only reason you were using it for your blog is to use the analytics that tr.im provides. What other reason could you have for obscuring all the links in your blog?

Anyway, assuming you are writing a script to replace the links, it's a trivial task to get the script to hit the URL and read the Location header from the response, probably simpler than getting the data from an XML file. If you're doing it manually, surely it's quicker to hit the URL, copy the URL from the browser, and then paste it back, rather than looking up in an XML file.

playerx · 4 months ago

Why do I have thousands of links on my blog?
Because I have a WordPress plugin TwitterTools which reads my twitter feed and copies the content from Twitter to my blog. Because I know twitter won't be around forever. And also, when you give them a big url, or use Nambu which I did, to fit your msg in 140 characters sometimes you have to shorten, which I did. Now the preference I had using Nambu was either use tr.im or pray that either ping.fm doesn't shorten my link or Twitter doesn't shorten it using whomever they are in bed with at the time, it was tinyurl.com then recently now bit.ly.

Yea, I could try to go through all the posts and see where each tr.im URL goes to, or I could get the data, and hope that someone writes a WordPress plugin for FAILED SHORT URL Providers, or anything which needs REGEX Loving.

Any BTW we want a lot for "nothing" but that bit we want could have been in there from the start, which would have likely cemented their position in the URL shortening world. So their own destruction is their own failure. Come up with the features which allows your users to move on, and you will only bring yourself too much business to handle, so you will either grow or fail in time.

embeddedmind · 4 months ago

If you were smart enough to know that twitter wouldn't be around forever, then you probably knew that tr.im would't be around forever. So you must have saved all your links in some database. Right?

playerx · 4 months ago

With that statement, I believe you just obviated the need entirely for short URL services, automated and hand made backups.

In all honesty, yes those links were throw-away links in the greater sense, because I did create them on domains which I have no control over. I will ultimately have to deal with that should I become unable to rewrite what is in my Database.

I saved all those full size links in a database system not of my own control, without any sort of backup tools, in either tinyurl, tr.im, bit.ly, and my only index key is the short URL in backup. So at this point, tinyurl.com has been around longer than Twitter, bit.ly and tr.im put together. I also suppose you expect me to have those URL somewhere that I shortened from 2001 as well.

Of course all Internet services are going to fail at some point. But you also need to ask yourself which services have tools to easily export all the entries. Even with twitter you can only go back 3200 posts. Unfortunately I did not get a decent backup system for twitter in place until after reaching over that system limitation.

I have enough of the short URL created and backed-up to be happy, and again should someone write a WordPress plugin or mysql database script which expands them all, life would be great.

So in the mean time a decent opportunity for someone to come in and own this uncaring, difficult to make a buck niche of the Internet as it is ripe for the taking for those who want the glory.

Eric Woodward · 4 months ago

tr.im was never designed to be used in this way. That is what Google Analytics is for.

playerx · 4 months ago

WOW. Not to be mean, but how wrong can you be on that one?
The only way to get from my blog which has a href=http://tr.im blah blah
is to get the data from @trimurls guys, they have what tr.im/ZSFafsa == http 301 => http://fullsize.url/
And to suggest that Google Analytics does that? They see which outbound link was clicked, not what data exists in one's website.

Tom · 4 months ago

Actually, awe.sm does just that. You might want to check it out.

playerx · 4 months ago

Too late now wouldn't you say? And besides, the Nambu client gave no other option for URL shorteners.
So it was either use tr.im or run over 140 characters everytime have have "broken" tweets which is BS.

sokoloff · 4 months ago

Um, tr.im is going to be up through the end of the calendar year.

Why don't you find all your tr.im URLs, hit them, and tr.im will tell you where they redirect to?

hillary hartley · 4 months ago

because it should be easy to give us XML for our accounts instead of just shuttering the service and saying 'sorry'?

joaopaulopacheco · 4 months ago

I'm with you!!!

We want our backups, OK?!

Memyself Andi · 4 months ago

You want a lot for nothing....free...gratis...get over yourself, whining little twitter boy.

playerx · 4 months ago

if they give it away, and then decide they can't make any money, then that's their own business plan failure.

eteran · 4 months ago

There is the business model. Data export for 5$. Mean yeah, but would do.

playerx · 4 months ago

It all lacks trust. Provide the ability to export the data, or next time we won't trust the business venture from these people, and they will fail.

beniaminus · 4 months ago

Tr.im was the only service I used, definitely the best. Sad to see it go. You'll be missed.

Yuri Niyazov · 4 months ago

I'll give you $1000 for it. Not kidding.

Jim Manico · 4 months ago

I bid $1100

Nathan J. Brauer · 4 months ago

Seriously, put it on Ebay. It'll sell for something. Something is better than nothing!

HB · 4 months ago

So will you be updating Nambu with a new default url shortener?

erinw · 4 months ago

Such a shame. tr.im was definitely the best out of all of them - everything I needed in a single service.

Here's to wishing you the best with future endeavors.

ravi · 4 months ago

In case someone has not already mentioned this, TechCrunch is reporting (http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/5s...) that Nambu is asking for $80-$100k for tr.im. Which is fine with me, but the more disturbing bit reported by TechCrunch is that Nambu is planning to discontinue the Twitter client. That is a real loss. Nambu for Mac is the best Twitter Mac client today (IMHO). But the lack of any recent updates, after the initial flurry of updates and Twitter posts from @nambu, suggests TC may not be off the mark here. Can someone from Nambu comment?

RatherBeBiking · 4 months ago

Wow, that would be a huge loss if Nambu didn't get any more patches. Right now it is the BEST, but needs lots of work.

James Beamish-White · 4 months ago

I'm working on a replacement at http://twilitics.com, which shortens URLs to http://twu.sh/. Not quite as cool as tr.im as a URL, and features are yet to be up to this level, but big future plans. :)

XDS · 4 months ago

So far so good. I hope all the new offerings that are going to pop up keep ethics in mind and don't fuck their users if their service suffers a shutdown.

Dan · 4 months ago

No!!!!! I was so happy with the service! It was simply, just perfect. What a shame :(

FreddieFender · 4 months ago

This is painful to read as it is an angry rant over the inability to win. Your expectations were not in line with reality. You are mad because no body wants to purchase a product/solution that has massive competition and does not generate significant revenue. You tried - as many people do - and did not succeed. Chalk it up to the net and move on to another idea.

George Walker · 4 months ago

The problem with Twitter is that it isn't vendor-agnostic. By choosing Bit.ly as the default url shortener it created unfair market advantage for Bit.ly (which happens to be funded by the same VC as Twitter). Instead, they could have let the users choose their favorite URL shorteners.

But no, Twitter decided to jeopardize its platform credibility for short-sighted profits.

Fools, they are!

Twitter should be a non-profit organization with elected representatives. Twitter Services Inc. could be the commercial, independent company.

Common Sense · 4 months ago

hahahahahahahahahahahaha

Public service

hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha

or it could just be allowed to fail like other ideas that have no potential revenue stream

ralev · 4 months ago

So sorry about it.
It was a great service !

Hope your next project will be easier to monetize.
Cheer up ! You will make something even more cool !

Waiting to see it. Stay positive !

John rainer · 4 months ago

This sucks! looks like i'll have to use http://twi.la now. All the best for the future guys.

Erik · 4 months ago

Is it wise to base your entire business model around Twitter? I guess that is sort–of rhetorical.

Christophe · 4 months ago

OH MY GOD ! I always use it on http://twitter.com/FoireauxLiens ! I very very love it... I'm very very sad... I can buy to use it... It's a very good Web 2.0 service, I very very like it... Oh my God...

I'm very sad, RIP tr.im, thanks you for all!
Can you send me all links I have sended on a xls file? (or .pdf... what you want) at christopheduman@gmail.com? (user is: christopheduman)! Thanks you very much for all, I'm sad...

Ravi · 4 months ago

Tough luck old chaps. Your message is understandably downbeat but I hope there is better news awaiting on other fronts. Nambu outshines all competitors (including Tweetie) as a true Mac Twitter client. I wish you the best.

Hunter · 4 months ago

Release the software under an open source licensing agreement and live on forever as people develop more complex, unique derivatives. It's a damn shame when something like this happens. Best of luck.

ANkh · 4 months ago

That is a real shame. I like tr.im and will really miss it.
Good luck in future ventures.

denied · 4 months ago

Sorry to hear this, I love tr.im ... only service I used. You will be missed!

brookr · 4 months ago

Agreed, same here.

Thanks for all the work, Trim.

Please, live on in the open source world!

Alex · 4 months ago

Can you drop me a line and let me know what technology you are running behind tr.im? And what "token amount of money" you are seeking?

We would be happy to take over tr.im if we can make these details work.

Thanks.

dave · 4 months ago

I'm interested in working with whoever might acquire tr.im. I have some serious ideas about how to evolve this as a business.

hungrygardener · 4 months ago

I am in process of integrating bit.ly into HungryGarden.com as well as Twitter. I have been following Dave's RSSCloud concept and think it has a lot of promise. Whereas, I need HungryGarden to work with Twitter, I am interested in the pubsubhub technology and would like to be compatible with that too. Hungry Garden is all about 'location."

My question to you tr.im is what do you estimate the cost to be to run this off amazon's cloud infrastructure?

If we could cover the cost of operating it on Amazon would you be interested in pursuing that approach and getting with Dave to hear what idea's he has about monetizing shorteners.

Frankly, I hate to be dependent on twitter and bit.ly especially in light of what happened last week.

Would you consider porting this to Amazon and see what develops?

wewillchange · 4 months ago

I know it is late, but being able to host your own url shortener would be pretty freakin' cool. Packaging up your system way to complicated?

Eric Woodward · 4 months ago

Yes, tr.im was not designed to do this, and offering that does not change the core reasoning behind the decision.

Tom · 4 months ago

Hello,

I run a TightURL shortening service at l.mbilf.com, and anyone can host their own TightURL powered shortener. It's open source and is currently relatively light on features.

rocketllama · 4 months ago

l.mblif.com? For a shortening service, it's name is pretty long, double the length of tr.im. That was part of the beauty of tr.im - it had the shortened name and the name "trim" actually meant something memorable.

Tom · 4 months ago

It's for my personal use, if anyone else wants to that's fine, but it keeps the database my own. Unlike those who complain their blog will no longer work thanks to broken tr.im URLs, my URLs will stay up as long as I like.

I'm glad someone "liked" your comment without realizing this.

RatherBeBiking · 4 months ago

Yeah, not going to replace tr.im by even a little..

gourneau · 4 months ago

It was really beautiful while it lasted. Thanks for your effort.

Iva · 4 months ago

Really sad news, as this was the only service I liked, out of them all and it provided me with absolutely all I wanted.

maique · 4 months ago

thank you for all your hard work, i'm really sorry to see you go. since i found you i haven't used any other service, your was perfect.

wishing you all the best in future projects.

Marek Isalski · 4 months ago

...and we learn (yet again) that URL shorteners are harmful ;-)

http://bit.ly/sz07L

Sorry it didn't work out, guys. Good luck in future endeavours!

Fan · 4 months ago

Sorry to see your service ending. Was my favourite, a great tool. Best of luck in your future endeavors.

bonder · 4 months ago

Can someone at tr.im please reach out to me? My contact details at the URL for this post.

Matt Rogowski · 4 months ago

Damn, that's terrible news, couldn't believe it when I saw it on my Twitter feed. This was by far the best URL shortener I've used, and it's very sad to see you go.

Hunter · 4 months ago

Release the software under an open source licensing agreement and live on forever as people develop more complex, unique derivatives. It's a damn shame when something like this happens. Best of luck.

Ash Young · 4 months ago

It is a shame but as with many Twitter related things, there is just no way to monetize the traffic.

nevyn · 4 months ago

This is really bad news :( Tr.im is my favorite shortener. Great UI, fantastic stats, nice features like claiming.

I see from the comments that there is at least SOME interest in keeping tr.im alive. If someone gets the ball, I'd love to help out any way I can to keep it rolling. My developer experience and contact details are at http://thirdcog.eu .

PS. I *would* pay to keep using tr.im.

PPS. Idea: This is sorta kinda evil, but add interstitial ads on the shortened links, to pay for bandwidth so that the URLs may live on even though the shortening service itself is dead. Better than nothing, and you might make a little bit of ad money on the side.

Liz remus · 4 months ago

I am sorry to hear about this! I really enjoyed your service and the name helped me remember which site I used. Good luck to you guys in the future. You created a great service here and I'm sure you'll do great wherever thus leads you.

-Liz Remus

snowrideralways · 4 months ago

Is there any way that we could access our current tr.im urls to be able to at least manually recreate them using some other service? the problem is that i cannot even remember all the normal short urls that i have setup and use on a daily/weekly basis.

robertmclaws · 4 months ago

I'm interested... please contact me at the e-mail address provided with a price you are looking to sell at.

James Weston · 4 months ago

Sorry to see tr.im go. For the short time I used your service, I thought it was ace. But I understand the reasons. And thank you for keeping URL redirections going until the end of the year; very honourable. Thanks and good luck in your future ventures!

tlrobinson · 4 months ago

Hopefully this will be a wake up call that URL shorteners are bad for the web...

codex24 · 4 months ago

What is wrong with URL shorteners, besides proprietary ones that go belly-up with no notice?

tlrobinson · 4 months ago

Nearly all of them *will* go belly up at some point, instantly breaking millions of URLs that would otherwise be valid.

Eric Woodward · 4 months ago

Perhaps. But no links will break based on tr.im, until hopefully they are no longer relevant to anyone.

tlrobinson · 4 months ago

"However, all tr.im links will continue to redirect, and will do so until at least December 31, 2009."

So most tr.im'd URLs won't be relevant in 5 months?

mekal · 4 months ago

бля

Mike · 4 months ago

Shame to hear you guys are giving it up, but I wish you the best with Nambu.

I'm a bit surprised though that you're shutting up shop without really trying to push forward a sale. However, if you'd still be interested, I'd be interested to hear what you're looking to get in exchange for the domain + entire service and IP.

abrahamvegh · 4 months ago

I am very interested in taking over tr.im. Please drop me a line. me at abraham vegh dot com

tpinto · 4 months ago

Honestly, I get your point. All the luck for you guys.

Mark Guadalupe · 4 months ago

I am feeling so sad for you guys tr.im right now, wish I(or we) could have done something to help you guys, really, i'm seriously thinking of building a community and get the others join the cause that would help tr.im up and running again... Goodluck and thanks to everyone at nambu!

RatherBeBiking · 4 months ago

Nooooooo!

Stephen A. · 4 months ago

I'm feeling very badly for you guys at tr.im, and not just because I relied on this service to track hits to my Websites - both personal and business.

I think this raises a lot of issues, one of which is whether "free use" services like this can exist in the long term. I question who would invest in a company with no plan for monetization, and wonder how services like twitter manage to do just that.

For what its worth, I would have paid a small amount to use the service (say, each time I would create a link, or monthly) if there was enhanced content for URL tracking added. But this is a tough decision and a tough business to make profitable.

I feel your pain.

Webnov8 · 4 months ago

Hey we'll buy this domain if we like the price.

Eric Woodward · 4 months ago

We are not going to be selling the domain name for fear of a spammer getting it and redirecting all links. We will not do that.

Webnov8 · 4 months ago

You can make that one of the terms of sale.

Voyagerfan5761 · 4 months ago

I'm sad to see the service go, and I really hope that one of the commenters expressing interest in taking over the site makes it happen.

On a side note: The tr.im homepage says, "Your tweets with tr.im URLs in them will not be affected." Does that mean just "until at least December 31, 2009" or for the foreseeable future?

I mean, I have tr.immed bookmarks in several different browser profiles and posted links in hundreds of sites, emails, tweets... Am I (pardon my language) fucked if I don't set aside a weekend to find all the links and edit them wherever possible to point directly to a new shortened URL or the full URL?

Or, as Pownce did upon shutting its doors, will there be a data export facility at some point? Say to CSV?

Shit... I just shortened a URL earlier today. I was wondering why my last few links all said they'd gotten 0 clicks... And what happens to pic.im now? There's no giant notice on the homepage over there.

PS: I have never really liked TinyURL or Bit.ly. I don't know what service I'll use now...

Eric Woodward · 4 months ago

We assume most of those items will be either be irrelevant or transitioned within 6 months or so.

Voyagerfan5761 · 4 months ago

Could I possibly get more details from you? What items will be irrelevant? Which will be transitioned? More importantly, what should I begin planning to do in the next few months to make sure I am minimally inconvenienced?

Samuel Lavoie · 4 months ago

sad to see it go. That was the best one. Good luck in your next project guys..

Webnov8 · 4 months ago

I must say tr.im is the shortest URL that is relevant to its functionality. I was just switching to have it as my default 10mins ago then just so happened to visit the site to see this :).

pablo_livardo · 4 months ago

Judging by the comments here, there is a value to the brand and underlying technology and I'm sure you'll receive some serious offers in the coming days. As others have said, tr.im has potential but it needs a different business model to make it viable and cover its costs. If you have a detailed proposal on the sale of tr.im I'd love to see it as I'd like to know what the conditions of sale are and look at raising the "token amount of money".

donnamc · 4 months ago

Tr.im was the best URL shortening app I found - and the became the only app I used. Really hope that the announcement about discontinuing service will prompt some action so that the service can remain available.
I am disappointed that I didn't know this was going to happen. I have alot of URLs that I continue to retrieve from TR.IM for reposting in apps. I would have appreciated the opportunity to document some of them. I know I can get the information from other sources - but retreiving info from TR.IM would have been most convient.
I will remail opptomistic that TR.IM will once again become available!!

Thanks for the service you have provided to this point!!

Elvis Dallas · 4 months ago

Awesome service - too bad it isn't going to make it. Thank you for all the URLs you've tr.immed for me. It is truly appreciated.

Now, back to Nambu... :-)

David Moreno · 4 months ago

My small tribute as a blog post to tr.im:

http://log.damog.net/2009/08/tr-im-calls-it-quits/

Michael Bauser · 4 months ago

So, did tri.im have any sort of business plan besides "sell out to Twitter?"

If not, I'm thinking that's your problem, right there.

Victor · 4 months ago

I'm sure you thougth about it, but is it viable to moentize on the side of the publishers? For example, frame the original content like ow.ly (i think) and optionally charge "big sites" to display their own selected content when you redirect to them. For "unpaid" redirects show your own ads or popular links from other "paid" publishes. Makes sense? I'm not expert or anything, just throwing the idea out there!

Eric Woodward · 4 months ago

We have no interest in framing redirects as some services have chosen to do.

codex24 · 4 months ago

Thank goodness, That is why I loved tr.im in the first place. But the 'receiver pays' model might have more value than a 'caller pay' one. You have access to the numbers, what kind of volume are we talking about for the top 100 linked-to domains?

Alberto G · 4 months ago

I think this is fucking lame, Tr.im. It's not hard to keep the redirects working indefinitely - see tinyurl, run by one guy for almost 10 years and his links always work. If you cant make a business about it - too bad, you tried, didnt work - but if you wanted you could keep your links working continuously. Sounds like you just want to complain

Eric Woodward · 4 months ago

I hear your frustration, but nobody wants to maintain servers indefinitely for no reason. I cant speak to tinyurl's motivation. No one is complaining, we are just accepting reality.

William Pietri · 4 months ago

Thanks for your efforts. As a fellow developer, I loved how well-built this service was, and look forward to seeing what you folks do next.

Can you say how many tr.im URLs have been registered, how many redirects a day you're doing, and how many you're doing on URLs older than, say, 60 days? I'd like to try some experiments. I suspect I can get the long-term hosting costs for this to be pretty low, and possibly free, so there may be no need to break a bunch of URLs.

jd · 4 months ago

You can't even give it away?

zokier · 4 months ago

Seems that some people are at least interested in taking over tr.im. If you guys don't manage individually to make good enough offer then maybe you could co-operate somehow. Of course making investments with random guys from the internet sounds bit risky. Maybe even some kind of fund-raising effort could be made?

davekerpen · 4 months ago

This news makes me very sad, but the quick and strong reaction from many of tr.im's fans is inspiring.
I have always preferred tr.im to all the other url shorteners and I'd like to add that I would make a micropayment each time I tr.im a link to help support the service. Ad revenue, perhaps a little far fetched at this point, is another potential source of some income.

I am very hopeful that someone will step in and make you a legitimate offer, Eric.
I'm also hopeful that the Twittersphere will rise in support of you guys. (#savetrim , anyone?)

In the meantime, THANK YOU for all you have provided, for free, to all of us. You rule, tr.im.

Eric Woodward · 4 months ago

Thanks for the kind words, but I think you are in the minority in terms of being willing to pay for the service. We loved tr.im too, but in the end, if there is no chance of competing with bit.ly because of their inside connection to Twitter, we should just accept the facts, and move on.

Daniel M. Clark · 4 months ago

"...in the end, if there is no chance of competing with bit.ly because of their inside connection to Twitter..." and that, right there, is why you failed. Two reasons: first, you're quick to blame bit.ly's supposed inside connection to Twitter. That's a cop-out. It leads into the second reason: you based your success or failure on TWITTER. Seriously. TinyURL was around long before Twitter, and will be around long after Twitter because no matter that the hell bit.ly does, they don't rely on Twitter.

If the only measure of success is whether or not you can beat bit.ly in Twitter, then you never deserved to be in the game to begin with. If you can't see a way to succeed with a URL shortener with such a perfect domain name as tr.im without Twitter... hell, I'm not going to even try to explain it.

Maybe now you'll have time to fix Nambu so it doesn't crash every time I try to type a message. Sorry if all this sounds harsh, but I've read whiny comment after whiny comment, and I'm finding myself with a marked lack of sympathy.

Eric Woodward · 4 months ago

Fair enough, but I don't really think you have much perspective on the reality of the situation. It is not blame per se, but a fair appraisal of the situation. bit.ly won because Twitter decided it should be so. This is not "supposed" on our part as you claim. They are a closed system and so they get to make those decisions.

There is no way we could justify investing in tr.im's development to remain competitive when the design was made. tr.im is more than competitive against bit.ly as many comments show but still does not have a chance against it, and neither does any other shortener thinking bigger than a few corporate clients.

ravi · 4 months ago

Fair enough? There's nothing fair about that comment (that you are ill-advisedly responding to).

XDS · 4 months ago

Eric ,

Are you now suggesting that if Twitter switched to Tr.Im then the service would still be available ?

ajkirwin · 4 months ago

Are you going to make public a list of tr.im'd URLs?

Adrian · 4 months ago

tr.im is the best url shortener that I found, a sentiment shared in this excellent video tutorial: http://torley.com/is-trim-the-best-url-shortener

I'm fairly confident that you'll hook up with someone who you'll feel comfortable selling the domain to.

thanks for an awesome service, and best of luck on your next project

JimD · 4 months ago

Well this just sucks. I love tr.im - my shortener of choice for the last year.

adamsonx · 4 months ago

I'm sorry to hear that you guys couldn't monetize off of such a great service :(

This definitely was my favorite link-shorteners.

I hope everything goes well in your future endeavors.

iHani · 4 months ago

This is sad, Anyway thanks for evrything :(

mick mclaughlin · 4 months ago

opensource it please... we can make it work ;)

maryspiro · 4 months ago

Tr.im will be missed by the Baltimore Science News Examiner. I used it to track the popularity of my stories and it worked better than others. Hope someone can come in and take over for you. In the meantime, I'll probably reluctantly use bit.ly through Destroy Twitter or ow.ly, which is built into HootSuite. But I preferred to ability to track individual story clicks.

Paolo · 4 months ago

NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO.

crazylikethat · 4 months ago

We very much enjoyed your service and thought it was well done. Given reasonable yearly fees, we would be more than happy to pay for your service. Think of all the people paying for Flickr pro.

Thank you for the time we did have with tr.im.

TRIM · 4 months ago

I will offer $3000 for it.

second bidder · 4 months ago

I'll bid $5k USD. Contact me to work out the details, but I imagine you'll quickly have a higher offer.

Best offer · 4 months ago

I will bid 6k, no joke, we have a use for it

rocketllama · 4 months ago

tr.im was the best, bar none.

paulidin · 4 months ago

What about nambu (desktop)'s built-in url shortening? will you disable that or release an update that uses another shortener?

I'll chime in with the rest, tr.im was the best, most appropriately named shortener.

Adomatic · 4 months ago

I love Tr.im!! (@adomatic) I hate to see you go but I understand. Good luck finding a buyer.

Budhajeewa Supun · 4 months ago

I suggest you to Googlize tr.im. As I know, they don't have a URL shortening service, yet. Did you people discussed with Google ?

Michael Bauser · 4 months ago

Why the hell would Google need a URL-shortening service?

Blog Marketing · 4 months ago

I'd say I am surprised at some of these comments but honestly I'm not, yet still appalled. I have seen quiet a few comments from annoyed people who are just oh so upset because they used a free service and somehow expected that forever that service would be perfect and even worse that someone other then themselves kept backups of their data/urls. Thats like complaining to a webhostring company if your site gets deleted and you don't have a backup... bad planning on your part, can't blame the people at the free service.

84 people, many interested offers. hmm seems very profitable to me. the sheer numbers you are talking make it profitable. Can't you just put up ppi banners and links and such? Also I'd highly recommend creating a "donation" as long as this page is up and this is an open topic. It seems to me out of 84 comments so far, 84 people are willing to donate (okay so maybe only 54 some people expect something for nothing as if its owed to them somehow... read your own comments to figure out if its you I am talking about).

I definately wish you the best. Stop by and say hi sometimes and if you put up a donation page, let me know.

shortformblog · 4 months ago

What do a bunch of links that don't go anywhere sound like? We're about to find out.

A damn shame.

Foliovision · 4 months ago

Hello Eric,

Tr.im is the best of the URL shorteners (and I tested a few before settling on tr.im). The domain name alone is brilliant.

Thanks for not shutting down quickly. I'm actually using tr.im pretty intensively as well in my business and would be more than happy to pay an annual fee if you just won't shut this down.

The level I would be happy to pay would be up to about $30/year and with a knife at my throat like now would go up to $50/year.

Please allow those of us who would like paying accounts to have them. We are more than enough to keep tr.im running for the paying customers and letting the free legacy URLs continue to work.

PS. And another big thank you for not selling to spammers or domain speculators

Eric Woodward · 4 months ago

I appreciate the sentiment, but running a very small URL shortener with a few hundred paying clients is just not an interesting business for us at this stage.

UtterDomain · 4 months ago

you're really missing the point. you can offer a free level of service and yet make money through tiered pricing for clients, similar to basecamp. If that's not a business you are interested in, then you should definitely look at the proposals of those making you an offer as there are lots of people who can make money doing what you are doing and that's why they are willing to pay you. they aren't spammers they are just smart business people that appreciate the service, tech, IP, etc. that you all have developed. If you close down that value goes to 0 and that's a pretty crappy thing to do for everyone involved.
enjoyed the service. don't appreciate this decision. all the best.

jas · 4 months ago

it's funny that you are trying to sell a service most people have NEVER heard of.

i use tinyurl. heard of them?

Eric Woodward · 4 months ago

You seem to have heard of it.

Ian Ferguson · 4 months ago

tinyurl.com = 11 chars
tr.im = 5 chars
That was my reason.

Sam · 4 months ago

I use tr.im all the time but now I'll stick to using the even shorter 3.ly

Hebert · 4 months ago

Dear tr.im, please consider release your code under a open-license. The microblogging community will be forever grateful to your gesture. Your code, will live on Open Url Shortners, like ur1.ca and many others that will be created.

Think about it!

Sardar Mohkim Khan · 4 months ago

I never thought that a day would come when i will hear a URL shortening service meeting its end. Sad, given that it was pretty popular

tav · 4 months ago

Sorry to hear about your current condition.

Good job though and thanks for providing the service this long!

George · 4 months ago

What a shame. What service am I going to use now?
tr.im was by far the best one, with the best interface amongst other things. Really liked the statistics too.

R.I.P.

Name · 4 months ago

Yes, there is a secret conspiracy that keeps bit.ly at the top of the Twitter charts. Yes, that is to blame for the demise of Tr.im. It didn't have anything to do with the fact that tr.i, oh you know, worked like crap. /sarcasm

Snappy John · 4 months ago

Do you remember the message that comes up after they break 1,000,000 points at the end of the Guitar Queero South Park episode? I wish I could blow your eardrums out playing that right now.

XDS · 4 months ago

I believe one of the main problems is that Trim wasn't as well known by many as say maybe some other early adopted url shortening services. (Which i will not name)

Also I believe if enough people catch wind of this and attempt to convince twitter otherwise that Tr.Im is indeed superior to their current shortener of choice then eventually they will have to side with the public on their interests and stop trying to protect their own.


Kind Regards,
XDS

Antoine · 4 months ago

Thanks a lot for the quality of your service.

Making a profitable business in those conditions is not easy, even you have a great service, and really nice features.

But many solutions exist so that your business don't stop existing. Moving the service to open source, finding new partners, simply hosting and without improving it, selling it to a similar business (even if I think it's not worth it)...

I wish you good luck for the future guys,

Antoine

ajkirwin · 4 months ago

Eric, I think that all isn't lost. I would be quite willing to take over tr.im and ensure the continued validity of links.

As a goodwill gesture, I've thrown up a tr.im reflector at http://malicelabs.com/trim/

If you plug the code (the random bunch of letters part) of a tr.im URL, it'll grab the full URL and save it to a database and also perform redirects.

Alexis Brille · 4 months ago

Wow, I just knew the guy behind Nambu is the same as the one behind tr.im.

Well, this is unfortunate for me because Nambu is my favorite Twitter desktop app on the Mac and tr.im is my favorite URL shortening service.

But things must go on and I wish you further luck and success, ejw.

William Pietri · 4 months ago

I posted here before looking at tr.im itself. How do I look at my previous URLs and stats and whatnot?

jbar · 4 months ago

i am so sorry to hear this. i truly liked you.

Aaron Ferguson · 4 months ago

Easily the best service out there, and the only one I used after I found it. It's also the shortest, so far as I know. This is very sad, indeed. :(

Adham Somantrie · 4 months ago

i'm the owner of siteo.us, the another short URLs service. i'm very sad to hear this...

George · 4 months ago

What's the asking price? for REAL!

philk · 4 months ago

Heard of this service only now when it is about to shut down. Interesting :)

Pedram · 4 months ago

Thanks for your all services.
Good Luck...

Dennis · 4 months ago

Thank you guys for this great service, too bad bit.ly is used as default by Twitter.

dontwasteTRIM · 4 months ago

I highly suggest opening an auction in eBay for the whole system or site name.

Surely, there will be someone interested.

Ian Ferguson · 4 months ago

Interested in what? A service that has been proven to be unprofitable? No thanks, I don't fancy flushing my money down with hosting charges :(

luefkens · 4 months ago

Tr.im I loved your service! Thanks for all the trimming. I am missing my stats!
I hope you will revive and that someone will come up with the money.
Maybe you can start a B2B service for corporate entities?!

OdinLiamWright · 4 months ago

very sad to see tr.im go offline :..( Perhaps there will be a phoenix moment.

Colin · 4 months ago

I am sad to see this go! You guys did have a great design and the shortest links, thank you for everything.

Eric · 4 months ago

And link rot begins.

AbbiV · 4 months ago

Sorry to see Tr.im go under- it truly was *the* best URL shortener around. I haven't read all your previous blog posts but if you had talked about your difficulties in advance, I'm sure a savior could have been located much earlier. Please contact me if you need some bridge financing because a service as good as yours doesn't deserve to go down. Take care & best of luck!

danp129 · 4 months ago

Never used tr.im, how does it make money?

They could show an ad message for 5-10 seconds with an automatic redirect after the ad. They should show the long URL with the ad so the user can click it if they are not interested in the ad. If the user is interested in the ad they can click it and it opens in a new window while the other redirect the the long url. Much better option than flat out closing IMO.

-- danp129@YaaaaaaaHoooooOoooo

danp129 · 4 months ago

Also, if the ads prove successful you could give a little kickback to the person that generated the URL so there's increased interest in using your service.

-- Daniel

Michael Bauser · 4 months ago

Ads wouldn't prove sucessful. Too many users would switch to a competitor who doesn't place ads on links.

danp129 · 4 months ago

It could work if if the other services don't offer stats and the end user wanted them.

It would certainly keep the service running longer which, whether or not their users like the links showing an ad, at least all their links would still work. I think that's less bad publicity than forcing everyone to scour through their blogs and figure out what links to change before a December deadline.

Quite honestly, i think it's not a bad business model. If I could get a kickback from every ad click from my links I would use the service quite a bit. It may not be a model that is ideal for the current customers but it would certainly attract another pool of customers.

c7ayton · 4 months ago

Trim (slang), a common slang term referring to one or multiple attractive women;

prashanthns · 4 months ago

Reminds me of the demise of the DVORAK keyboard to the more used, but technically inferior QWERTY....just because it was being used more. Survival is not of the fittest but the most used in Web 2.0

XDS · 4 months ago

Like we mentioned to Eric Woodward right from the start.

We still don't understand a couple of things, first off.

Why hasn't their been any word about this shutdown of the service on the main nambu page or blog ?


Also,

Why is nambu not allowing users access to their stats and giving them notice of the apparent shutdown?
This seems counter intuitive if you want someone to purchase your business & no one has access to the services or product you provided.

Also, You say you want someone to purchase your business model "?"

However you are displaying unethical practices for your current users.
This seems just all very stupid to me.


And companies wonder why they go under.



ummm....DUH. ?


EDIT:

Oh I get it , not only are you unethical you are also incompetent , seeing now that link stats are "no longer accurate".

Not really the best way to promote the sale of a business if you ask me. But what the hell do i know.
I just work for a guy that gets millions of hits a month.

Ian Ferguson · 4 months ago

@XDS - seriously, why do you expect these guys to continue supporting 'your' stats? Out of the goodness of their hearts and pockets? They have made a perfectly sensible business decision, why do you expect them to continue throwing good money after bad? Running a website with this number of visitors costs money, which they do not have.

@ everyone suggesting they get funded by advertising - I'm guessing you've never tried making a living through online advertising alone. The only market is in highly targetted advertising, which Facebook and Google Mail can do thanks to the vast amounts of personal information they hold on their users, and neither of these are actually profitable as a result. There's absolutely NO way tr.im could make enough through advertising to support themselves; and why bother when they know everyone would just use the ad-free alternatives?

These guys have put a lot of work into a venture that didn't return investment, so they're moving on. Kudos to them for trying, and don't knock/abuse them for failing. If you think they could have been successful, then why don't you have a go.

RatherBeBiking · 4 months ago

No need to be bitter because you don't like the way somebody handled the shutdown of a completely free service.

XDS · 4 months ago

To both of you idiots , I never EXPECT anything out of A N Y O N E.

I simply stated fact.

FACT , 1. Their has been absolutely NO acknowledgement of this "shutdown" on the main nambu page.

FACT , 2. Nambu "allegedly" wants someone to purchase a service that is essentially broken.
Which they have admitted openly doesn't work.

FACT , 3. Why the hell am i even trying to explain this to both of you. When you can't even grasp basic english.

Good Day sir/madam !

RatherBeBiking · 4 months ago

Hey there angry guy,

I still don't see how you think anyone at Nambu is unethical. Mainly I get the impression you're just bitter about the shutdown and wanting to vent some frustration at the people who worked hard to keep a great service running, and maybe couldn't quite figure out how to make it profitable (not necessarily incompetence).

XDS · 4 months ago

For starters lets say for arguments sake I was "angry" .

Which you can't blame anyone for being a little p. ohd at the informality of this shutdown.

I don't expect Tr.IM to open up their stats to anyone.

Infact I hope they don't , because I got a little secret for you., Its a service called Iterasi and backing up your pages obsessively.


Oh and to ian.
'My' Stats are actually still available, anyone that ever used a API before would know how to work them so this kind of thing is nothing more than a aesthetics issue.

As for stat viability.
I'm taking extra precautions on a day to day bases , If nambu was a company worth buying they should too.


So here's to hoping Ian got in before the post closed. ;o)


And A big F U to the rest of us.

Ian Ferguson · 4 months ago

Shame. All the best for your future ventures; even if tr.im didn't earn you money, it was an excellent project and should look good on your CVs. I sincerely hope when you do start a profitable project, VCs will recognise the work and polish you put into tr.im as a reflection of your skills and capabilities.

Retarded Arts · 4 months ago

why close it? Bad idea... make the redirected like show in a frame and you can then put some ads and other interesting contents like free stats, who is doing what, what's popular.. for the USERS to see.
Don't close the service... find way of balancing the economics

RatherBeBiking · 4 months ago

No, a frame is always a bad idea.

Retarded Arts · 4 months ago

well, shutting the service down is even worse of an idea...

Tom · 4 months ago

Sad day :-(.. good luck to you guys, whatever the future may hold for you!

twitterfools · 4 months ago

We are sad to see tr.im exiting the theater of url shortening services. We'd love to see someone pick it up and run with it...and find a way to monetize it successfully. Freedom of choice is great! Meanwhile competition is fierce and only the best and brightest shall rise to the top.

jleflar23 · 4 months ago

> "No business we approached wanted to purchase tr.im for even a minor amount."

I am offering $1 to buy and maintain tr.im. Let me know if you're interested.

Michael · 4 months ago

Now another place I can't get any trim!!

macartisan · 4 months ago

I am very sad to hear that your business plans didn't work out. Tr.im was the best of the URL shorteners, and you will be sorely missed.

Before you go dark, would you please offer a way for each of us to retrieve our Trimmed URLs and the stats related to each? I for one would happily pay $10 for that data package.

While we're at it, I'd also be happy to pay Nambu at $20/year for Tr.im service. Perhaps you should make one last effort to monetize before exiting the market.

Blog Marketing · 4 months ago

Censorship, yup you are definitely going places, moron. You may want to consider the 9 to 5 thing because you clearly can't run a business with 0 morals to stand on. Anyone without morals is doomed to failure. You tell your customers to screw off they can't have their data back, you won't answer any posts questioning why, you whine you can't sell even though there are a lot of offers on the table, you whine about twitter even though there are hundreds of other uses for a shortening service, and you censor comments you don't like. I'd say you have definitely got to reconsider your career options.

RatherBeBiking · 4 months ago

Haha, I like your most recent blog post : "Make Money with a blog".

What a douche! Blog marketing, hahah. How lame.

Blog Marketing · 4 months ago

You didn't see mymost recent post you moron. You saw the front page of a blog, that you didn't read or you would have realize was only a front page and not the page the posts go on. So yes how lame.

But thats okay insult my blog Its one of hundreds and it makes it so I can sit on my keester all day typing to morons like you.

Blog Marketing · 4 months ago

I really want to make this very clear to everyone. The owners of tr.im are full of garbage. URL shortening services were not created for twitter, by twitter, or for sole use with twitter. They only became more popular with twitter. There are and will still be OTHER REASONS for url shortening services other then just tritter. I have been using them for years to mask affiliate codes on websites. The fact is that this company doesn't WANT to invest in anything. They want to bring hype to their company so it gets seen more. Anyone can doubt this it will become obvious later on down the line. I know for a fact there are hundreds of twitter application creators who like many people here want to tell twitter to sod off and use their own selected shortening services. Never were any of them presented with a change to integrate with this service. It was unheard of. More then 20% of the commenters here only heard of tr.im because of this "closing" thing. Its a publicity stunt and if its not the owner of this business should consider a 9 to 5!!!

RatherBeBiking · 4 months ago

More than 20 percent? Where did you learnz da math?

jordanleft · 4 months ago

You really would thank that tr.im would be used as it has a character shorter web address and has a more appealing homepage :(

Ori Regev · 4 months ago

Thanks for a great service. Good luck with the greener pastures...

Philip Turpin · 4 months ago

Forgive me if I'm being a bit naive here but why not give the Code / Database design etc. to the Open Source community to allow tr.im to live on in one form or another?

Obviously a problem if there's sensitive code involved but if not then why not?

johndsmart · 4 months ago

The problem is outlined perfectly above, users will not pay for the service, why should they, and there is no percieved valuie for reselling the service - that is covered by point one.
Now, maybe I am being woefully dim witted hee, but it seems to me that if I click on a redirect, and get to see 1 5 second advert before I am redirected, as well as paying for the service, that would not alienate anyone. I get that from a lot of news sites I use. It does not aggitate me, I understand they dont provide the service for the love of it. So, surley, this could work? As a person and as a business I would be interested in working with tr.im to that end.

I am not talking about spamming here, no gathering personal data, or even basing the adverts on the link content, but just adding a layer to a service to keep the service available. Seriously Rr.im'ers, would any of you object to this?

VOF · 4 months ago

Just list it at flippa.com and get some money for it. At least the traffic will worth something, it easily fetch high 5 figure price.

gphilpott · 4 months ago

Good coding job, good service job, tr.im represents the best efforts of very bright people doing the right thing for a larger community. Eric, et al: Well done. Not all success is measured in dollars, trust me - I've been there. You are a rock star while the need is fulfilled, you are an outcast when something disrupts it. It isn't right, it isn't fair but it is what it is, we know *that* story personally. Literally, you are suffering the truth of "No good deed goes unpunished."

Don't let them get you down, reality is what it is. If you need help keeping things going, even in a "read-only/ramp-down" mode, let us know: we may be able to help. If not, if you are at the hands-washing phase, it is completely understandable. Just don't let the naysayers win, tr.im did Good.

Mike Putron · 4 months ago

I have created a ChipIn Page as suggested by Chris Stewart to try and save tr.im.

The page to donate is http://savetrim.chipin.com

Please help out and let's all together try and save tr.im from shutting down!

yabasta · 4 months ago

well pardon me but this sucks :P folks at tr.im: i'm sorry to hear this news,. all the best.

int · 4 months ago

Hi,
Can you tell me send me an estimate of payments required to keep tr.im alive, as it just now requires a server to operate on, if just the existing code is used and it can definetly be monetized in future

Regards

Martin · 4 months ago

Hi,

How can I contact you?

BR.

int · 4 months ago

Hi,
you can email me at the email provided in the comment

INT

michalstanko · 4 months ago

I actually woud not mind paying for the service, if it wasn't too expensive. 2 Euros every month would not kill me. Was this considered? I certainly like tr.im better than bit.ly.

Barbarella · 4 months ago

I just hope that now that this message of ceasing to exist is out in the open, someone will see it and be interested in buying tr.im at the last minute. So I´ll keep my fingers crossed!

Akash · 4 months ago

I have got a monetization strategy, Which might be able to help you out I had actually designed this for bit.ly but I am sure it would be better for you.

Please contact me on my email and I would be more than happy to assist.

bahmanzakeri · 4 months ago

How does one contact you?

okk · 4 months ago

So sad, ...But I Highly recommended... http://eCa.sh/JBPg

RatherBeBiking · 4 months ago

You dumbass.

lastnot · 4 months ago

stupid, desperate, greedy, bitter, fools that you are. Money... money... money... GLAD I am...

nattwat · 4 months ago

Oh one more thing you stupid morons, I'd say this tactic will make things worse for your wannabe selling strategy. Why not give it away to open source, or even post up a simple advert telling everyone you will give it away to anyone who can prove they will be able to sustain it's life. TWATS, GREED...

Eric CK · 4 months ago

Why don't you try selling the service to bit.ly?
Maybe for a little less than $80K-100K; that price is a little high for relatively simple (but useful) service.

Morgan · 4 months ago

I'm sad to see tr.im go. It was a service I was quite excited about.

RatherBeBiking · 4 months ago

Take a look. Updated post. tr.im isn't going anywhere.

Chris van Wyk · 4 months ago

It is sad! I like the name, it is catchy and mnemonic. Wonder what BizTweet will do, with their excellent extension for Joomla!, using tr.im as the URL-shortening service?
Thanks!
Chris

tatati · 4 months ago

I hate when twitter bit.ly-fies my urls, I make my comments fit in 140 characters to contemplate the actual source and even so that stupid fugu eats my url. :6

joe · 3 months ago

I use http://jut.org

free · 1 month ago

u guys should send your database to http://www.301works.org/ so that your links still work
rip :)

h · 1 month ago

This is the problem with all url shorteners. At any rat, this post was made 3 months ago. I made an account a few days ago. Why is this info not front and center on the front page? Why is it still possible to make an account? When is this shutdown going to happen? Any guidance would be helpful...

simmi · 1 month ago

I'm with u...........

RatherBeBiking · 1 month ago

Dear h and simmi.

Tr.im will be around a while longer. If you had checked the posts following this, you would have learned they resurrected the service and it has been functional for months now.