
RIP tr.im (So that's how it ends) - chanux
http://blog.tr.im/
======
apinstein
As a point of strategy, let's hope that the tr.im founders knew they were
taking a big gamble, because this was pretty obvious from the beginning.

With no clear business model except for a hope that someone buys them out, it
was just a lottery ticket.

A business like a URL shortener is a particularly dangerous one, since if you
succeed your costs skyrocket quickly yet you still have no business model.
This forces people quickly to either sell or shut down. Even worse, you're
likely to succeed at getting users since everyone knows what it is and needs
one, tricking you into thinking you're succeeding when all you're doing is
bleeding money.

If you're starting a business doing something that everyone loves and there
are already 10 of them but you have no business model, you should probably
stop right away unless you have some serious capital, preferably external
capital.

There's gotta be at least another couple dozen of these failure coming in the
future....

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MicahWedemeyer
Sad to know that someone probably poured a lot of heart into this and now it
goes down the tubes.

However, be ye warned: This is what happens when you base everything on
somebody else, whether it's Twitter, Facebook, Google or whomever. They can
crush you in an instant, and often it's just because you're too insignificant
to matter to them.

~~~
timdorr
Don't forget to include Apple in that group...

~~~
padmanabhan01
How does Apple belong to that group? They (also) sell hardware and people pay
for them. Unlike url shorteners or twitter etc..

~~~
zedwill
Apple iphone store economics? They have developers in the hundreds of
thousands, basing your business on it and pretending they care is mostly the
same thing.

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lsc
hm. I wonder.. how much of why they want to shut down is the hosting costs? it
seems like the perfect sort of business for a "Host me for the publicity"
deal. I'd be more than happy to give them hosting just for the bragging
rights, and I'm sure many of my competitors would also be interested.

------
shortformblog
This is lame. And it's such a weakness of URL shorteners.

~~~
Torn
100% correct. I don't use url shortners if I can help it, as it's introducing
yet another point of failiure in internet hyperlinks.

Who wants to bet that in a year or two there'll be another few url shortening
services down the drain, and _millions_ more broken links out there on the
net.

------
timdorr
Interesting that they are also stopping development on Nambu as a part of
this: [http://blog.tr.im/post/159489555/tr-im-to-
december-31-2009#c...](http://blog.tr.im/post/159489555/tr-im-to-
december-31-2009#comment-14533542)

I do hope they open source it. That client had the most potential from the
native Mac ones that I've tried.

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aditya
Quite interesting that there are more than a few people interesting in
purchasing it on the comments for that post (and the previous post). I wonder
how much money they're looking for and why they wouldn't sell it now even
after they've made "quiet" efforts to sell it earlier?

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mojaam
I'll give them credit for how they are communicating and hope for the best to
them. I'm sure the developers there gained and learned something in all this.
Unfortunately though, if they were to get bought now, they will look like
hypocrites.

------
nudded
<http://mashable.com/2009/08/10/shorturl-savior/> Bit.ly is willing to host
their urls starting as of tomorrow. tr.im has not yet responded.

