
Tr.im to be Community-Owned - peter123
http://blog.tr.im/post/165049236/tr-im-to-be-community-owned
======
pierrefar
Disclosure: I built, own and operate Cligs, one of the URL shorteners that was
part of the 301works founding announcement last Friday.

First off, I don't know what happened between bit.ly/Betworks and tri.m. But I
do take offence that 301works is a bit.ly publicity stunt.

See, I care most about the Cligs users. To me, 301works is a backup in case
something bad happens to Cligs. The backup is operated by an independent (read
not bit.ly) service, namely Gnip. I and others insisted on having an
independent entity run it for obvious reasons.

Each URL shortener specifies the terms of transfering the data to Gnip. It can
be anything from what I call "the dead man's will" option of simply locking
away the data to be released on the termination of service, all the way to
having a completely open data policy that the URL shortener basically says to
the world "do as you please".

So, at the absolute worst, it's an offsite backup service. In reality, it's
much more useful than a mere backup service. For example, if we get the
details right, the Gnip API could power a URL-expanding service that takes
some load off the URL shorteners' servers; this is just a basic example.

I've been talking about such a service with other owners of URL shorteners for
a few months, and so there is nothing new about it. We just worked hard now
given the anxiety we were seeing from our users. A lot of people worked hard
to make it work in a good way, sometimes working at odd hours, to make sure
that no one gets the short end of the stick.

So please, don't call 301works a bit.ly publicity stunt. It's not.

If anyone wants to talk about this more, email me: my first name (first 6
letters of my HN username) at cli.gs.

~~~
earl
While 301works might not be just a bit.ly stunt, it certainly was
disproportionately important to bitly not to have a glaring example of the
negative effects of URL shorteners staring people in the face -- they
encourage link rot and offer the potential for lots of it. The potential for
shorteners to disappear and break lots of links is certainly a massive flaw in
their business model.

~~~
poutine
This whole link rot is massively over stated. Most short urls are used on
Twitter. Who is reading old Tweets on Twitter? Almost nobody since Twitter is
about now, not yesterday.

By the time you switch over to some 301works archive the links will have lost
99% of their relevancy.

~~~
earl
I used to agree with you, but I think that both people and companies have an
interest in preserving the conversation. Not every, or even most,
conversations, but certainly some.

~~~
poutine
In which case you should be using your own shortener if you want to preserve
your own links. Or if you're a company scanning other links then you should be
resolving the short urls as you receive the entries.

------
brk
Is just me or do they guys come off as being entirely childish over the
"twitter/bit.ly walled garden"?

Everything I've seen them post about tr.im lately has a half-dozen whining
comments about twitter/bit.ly.

If their product has no value outside of Twitter, then what exactly did you
expect? If tr.im is a valud URL shortener with some value to it, then it
should be able to stand on its own outside of any other 3rd party service.
TinyURL has been around for more than a decade, long before Twitter was even a
programmers wet dream.

~~~
jcapote
Finally someone said it, tr.im comes off as a bunch of whiners. Also, it takes
balls accusing someone of a publicity stunt when the only reason anyone cares
about tr.im right now is because they pulled the best publicitiy stunt of 2009
("Were shutting down....Nope, just kidding!")

~~~
xelfer
And even that was ripped off from tshirthell:
<http://www.tshirthell.com/hello.php>

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andreyf
This seems interesting:

 _tr.im will offer all link-map data associated with tr.im URLs to anyone that
wants it in real-time. This will involve a variety of time-based snapshots of
aggregated destination URLs, the number of tr.im URLs created for any given
destination URL, and aggregate click data._ ... _tr.im will begin publishing
all statistics and information related to it usage. Its operating cash flow,
redirects, URL creation counts — everything — so that the community can have
confidence it is on solid footing._

I wonder what business models might be affected if this becomes popular...

~~~
poutine
Seems that bit.ly has a fair bit to lose given that similar data to what
they're claiming is so valuable is now going to be open to anyone.

Wouldn't want to be a bit.ly investor today. Well, I wouldn't want to be a
short url investor any day :)

------
joshu
What does "community-owned" mean, exactly?

------
riffic
hah, what makes you think this guarantees anything?

a noble ambition but one with no vision.

