Social networking software developer Nambu Network has announced it is discontinuing its tr.im URL-shortening service, effective immediately. URL-shortening services are wildly popular as a way to share links via Twitter and other services where sharing links via long URLs simply isn’t practical; services like tr.im generate unique, very short URLs that redirect to the original, longer form, but are suitable for using in tweets and other short messages. Some services even offer usage tracking for shortened URLs.
Nambu says that tweets and other messages using tr.im URLs will not be affected through at least December 31, 2009, but statistics on shortened URLs will no longer be reliable.
Nambu claimed the shutdown is the result of ongoing costs for maintaining the service and a failure to find a buyer for tr.im. Nambu points out that there’s no effective way to monetize a URL-shortening service, and Twitter—apparently the main source of tr.im users—appears to have settled on competing service bit.ly as its de facto URL-shortening service.
“We regret that it came to this, but all of our efforts to avoid it failed. No business we approached wanted to purchase tr.im for even a minor amount,” the company wrote on tr.im’s home page. “There is simply no point for us to continue operating tr.im, and pay for its upkeep.”
URL shortening services have been lauded for their convenience—especially in character-constrained environments like Twitter—but have also been criticized as a vector for malware and exploit sites, since they quite effectively obscure a destination URL from Web users until it’s too late.
