OK, this is dumb. If you want to sell, why announce to the world (!) that you're failing? Either your product is dead or it's not. This sounds like a refusal out of spite, not logic.
The bit.ly offer was clean, and clearly in the public interest. Spitting on it now only makes the tr.im folks look small and petty.
Not to mention that they didn't just say "we're closing", they said "There is no way for us to monetize URL shortening", and all but said there was only room for one shortener to make money.
If I were a prospective buyer, "we failed" wouldn't be a turn-off, but "we don't think it can be monetized" sure would be. You want to sell something you don't think can be monetized? Good luck.
For all the mention of link rot, it seems like the primary use of third-party url-shorteners is Twitter. What percent of tweets are still useful a month later? "Oh no, my 3-month old tweet will be slightly more useless!" isn't really all that scary of a thought.
Yup, exactly. URL shorteners are disposable. That's why nobody will buy Tr.im. Unlike StackOverflow, this really is something that you can build in five hours.
Honestly, what does someone buying Tr.im get? A tiny uptick in their market share of shortened links? There's certainly no technology involved, and there are no locked-in customers involved.
Further, it seems like most url-shortened links are real-time, and probably useless after a few months. I wonder how many shortened links are still visited months later. And given that shortening-service use is accelerating, what slice of the pie is the 2009 links from a smaller player in the market going to be worth in 2010?
Can someone explain to me how it's worth more than pocket money?
I'm sure the typo domain squatters could probably come up with a way to squeeze money out of the residual incoming traffic from links -- since tr.im links will continue to get some volume of traffic for a long while yet -- so the question is how much traffic, for how long, and how much of a CPM can you get? Do the math & you have a minimum valuation...
But I hope to hell they're not evil enough to sell off to those scum. :)
I don't get the 301 idea: isn't it equivalent to proposing "let's all just use bit.ly"? In theory it sounds nice, but in practice it seems quite ridiculous.
I don't think so. If a company controls their domain, they control the links. If the company goes out of business, the domain can be transferred and the 301 service takes over processing the links. That's my take on it, anyway.
The bit.ly offer was clean, and clearly in the public interest. Spitting on it now only makes the tr.im folks look small and petty.