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The shortening service tr.im is closing down, for want of a business model:

Of the url shortening services:

Tinyurl.com is the big daddy of them all, and generates a large amount of traffic even to its own site, but as far as I am aware even that is a spare time project, which now runs in “maintenance mode”.

Bit.ly has been best of breed for some time by providing a portfolio of statistical services, and other features.

ow.ly is the in house shortening service at Hootsuite, which is established as the leading service for managing multiple Twitter accounts.

I think there is an analogous lesson for another zero monetary cost but time-sink activity - blogging.

As a bolt-on commentary or marketing channel, whether to a consultancy business, a political career, or as a “proof” of ability as a writer, blogs add enormous value; as a standalone platform, they can be a time (and therefore money) pit.

A few days ago I noted that @DowningStreet had seen an amazing growth in Twitter followers, after being added to the “Opt-in” list displayed as part of the Twitter sign-up process.

This morning, Jason Calcanis - an prominent blogger and Internet Entrepreneur, has offered Twitter $250k for a two-year slot on the “suggested” list.

Is it a good thing?

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Earlier this week Comscore published data showing the percentage of internet users in European and Asian countries who accessed Social Networking websites in December 2008.

As you can see, Europe has a far higher penetration, with only Singapore and South Korea from Asia in the top 10 countries when the lists are combined.

The UK has the highest penetration at 80%. I was surprised that South Korea, with their advanced broadband infrastructure, only came 10th.