Archive for tr.om

You are browsing the archives of tr.om.

For want of a business model, the shortening tr.im service was lost

For want of a business model, the shortening tr.im service was lost

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

20090810-tr-im-url-shortening-closing

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.