Just as cement is the glue that holds together the bricks of our homes and businesses those URLs we click on everyday at the glue that holds the Web together. Without those interconnecting links the Web literally wouldn’t exist. The problem with those links is that they are often exceptionally ling and in a language of their own – or so it seems sometimes.

Prior to the advent of social media services like Twitter URL shortening services were a rare breed with the big name in the field being the easily recognizable TinyUrl. Since the explosive growth of Social Media and services like Twitter the URL shortening service has exploded as well. For a while there it didn’t matter where you turned, it seemed as if a new URL shortener was being announced. For every Twitter, Facebook or Friendfeed clone that was created there was yet another URL shortener following on its heels.

Then we find out the other day that one of the more popular shorteners, Tr.im was going to be shutting its doors and at some point at the first of January, 2010 links created using the service would no longer work. The company behind Tr.im claim that once Twitter had made Bit.ly the default shortening service for Twitter the game was over for anyone else in the field. Then there was the whole problem of monetizing the project – there was none.

This lead to the main page of Tr.im displaying a “close of business” notice of which this was a part of

There is no way for us to monetize URL shortening — users won’t pay for it — and we just can’t justify further devleopment since Twitter has all but annointed bit.ly the market winner. There is simply no point for us to continue operating tr.im, and pay for its upkeep.

Source: Mashable :: Tr.im URL Shortener Shuts Down; Short Links to Die?

Since that point though Nambu, the parent company of Tr.im, has relented to the public outcry against the closure and re-instated the service:

We have restored tr.im, and re-opened its website. We have been absolutely overwhelmed by the popular response, and the countless public and private appeals I have received to keep tr.im alive.

We have answered those pleas. Nambu will keep tr.im operating going forward, indefinitely, while we continue to consider our options in regards to tr.im’s future.

So a minor disaster has been averted for the meantime but that doesn’t mean that we won’t see this event being repeated and sooner rather than later.

I am sure that some will say so what it’s only Twitter and it’s users that will be affected should these shortening service go belly up. Well they couldn’t be more wrong as the use of URL shorteners have spread far beyond just Twitter. Blogs are using them, Facebooker’s are using them, web forums are using them. In effect these shortened URL are becoming the new cement that is holding the web together and their use is increasing on a daily basis across all areas of the web.

If there is one weakness the Web has it is these URL shorteners because as the team at Tr.im quite rightly pointed out keeping all those servers that are behind these services running is an expensive proposition

tr.im did well for what it was, but, alas, it was not enough. We simply cannot find a way to justify continuing to work on it, or pay its network costs, which are not inconsequential. tr.im pushes (as I write this) a lot of redirects and URL creations per day, and this required significant development investment and server expansion to accommodate.

Now Tr.im is only one of a great number of shortening services out there being used daily and if they are having trouble justifying the cost of maintaining a service that isn’t bringing in an income imagine all the other shortening services as well. It is inevitable that at some point these services are going to disappear and while Bit.ly may be the darling of Twitter at the moment and have some sort of business plan beyond just shortening links the same can’t be said of the rest of the services like them.

So what happens when these shortening services begin to disappear and the links they are responsible for begin to break down, because it will happen. Slowly but surely we are going to see portions of the web turn dark – unreachable – because the links that lead to them no longer exist. It might not be too bad if one or two URL services go under as I am sure we’ll survive but things like this have a snowball effect and it could turn out that the very things we used to make the web more accessible could in the end be the very thing that tears it apart.

Paul Short, my writing partner here at The Inquisitr, suggests that rather than using some third party shortening service bloggers should seriously consider rolling our own. I can see the rational behind that idea but I’m not sure that is the answer either, although one I’ll be looking into, but either way the reliance of URL shorteners is something that could have serious repercussions and it won’t be pretty.

Related posts:

1. Url Shortener Tr.im Shuts Down – What happens to your links now?
2. Url shortener Tr.im saved from death, but still serves as a serious wake up call
3. Twitter has your back as it begins blocking nasty URLs

The owners of URL shortener Tr.im have decided to keep Tr.im open, after announcing last week that the service was to close.

In a post on the Tr.im blog, the owners explain that the decision to keep Tr.im open came about due to the overwhelming response from users, and “countless public and private appeals.” They do however go on to note that the market is still stacked against the service, specifically Twitter favoring Bit.ly, and that they might consider selling Tr.im if the right owner was found.

The short lived closure of Tr.im does serve one purpose though: a serious wake up call to users about trusting your links to third party services. All users of Twitter use URL shortening services, with Twitter automatically converting URLs to Bit.ly URLs when they haven’t already been pre-shrunk, and Twitter clients such as Tweetdeck offer a variety of URL shortening services. Use of these URL’s goes beyond Twitter, and extends into social networking sites such as Facebook as well; that they are popular is a given, but that popularity comes with a huge risk: those links only work as long as the short URL services offering them remain in business.

That you’re safe using one service or another shouldn’t be presumed; Tr.im wasn’t a fly by night operation by any stretch, and although it’s back today, there’s nothing to say it might not close down again some time in the future. Bit.ly may have a pile of VC support and an interesting business plan, but as we know with all startups: not all of them go the distance. What would happen if Bit.ly or TinyURL were to close?

Users aren’t going to suddenly stop using third party short URL services, because the convenience wins out over the risk. But if you operate a website or blog and you share links on a Twitter account, you have the option of running your own short URL service, and it’s the only 100% guarantee that your links will remain good for as long as your site remains in business. We use the WordPress plugin WordTwit, that creates short URL’s using Inquisitr.com as its base, and I’m happy to recommend it. Using WordTwit you can also set up your own dedicated URL just for short URL generation as well if your site URL is too long, and it’s not hard at all to set up.

Related posts:

1. Url Shortener Tr.im Shuts Down – What happens to your links now?
2. Twitter has your back as it begins blocking nasty URLs
3. WordTwit offers custom short URLs for WordPress blogs

One of the biggest dangers surfers are facing on the web these days is the incredible proliferation of URL shortening services like TinyUrl, bit.ly, and countless more. While they do provide a valuable service they also can be used by cretins that want to try and trick users into going to malware type sites. It wasn’t until the increase of services like Twitter though that this potential danger really gained any ground.

Word has it today though that Twitter has turned on URL blocking that will not let shortened links that lead to malware sites to be posted. This was first noticed by security firm F-Secure and is now being widely reported throughout the blogosphere – as it should be.

As Sarah Perez over at ReadWriteWeb points out this service is probably being provided in conjunction with a third party as the cost to Twitter to maintain the needed database of constantly increasing threats would probably be more than the service could sustain.

Since the company has not made any official announcement about the new protection, it’s unknown at this time if Twitter is using a particular service to provide the lookup capabilities for the malicious URL identification or if they are managing this process in-house. If we had to bet, though, we would go with the former. Maintaining a current "block list" for malicious web sites would be a major undertaking for the startup. It’s more likely they’ve partnered with a security company of some sort to provide this service or are using a publicly available API, such as Google’s Safe Browsing API, which checks URLs against Google’s blacklist.

Source: ReadWriteWeb :: Twitter Starts Filtering Malicious URLs

The only drawback to this is that this parsing of URLs only occurs if posting from the actual Twitter page rather than third party clients. Now other than bit.ly none of the other URL shorteners provide the same kind of protection so really this ends up only being a half-measure.

But I guess a start is better than nothing. Now if the rest of the URL shortening services would climb on board.

Related posts:

1. WordTwit offers custom short URLs for WordPress blogs
2. Url shortener Tr.im saved from death, but still serves as a serious wake up call
3. Twitter Drops Canada SMS Support

At its base, POPrl.com offers a short url service similar to Bit.ly and Tinyurl, but that’s where the similarites stop. Every link created by POPrl.com is tracked, and the click data on each link is used to create a list of popular sites, a sort of meme tracker crossed with Digg.

The new POPrl.com includes support for thumbnails, embedded video support, and improved algorithms which are said to improve the results on the page. POPrl.com also now offers an API and is working closely to integrate the product with other sites.

The “POP this” button is similar to buttons available from Digg, and Reddit and allows the user to “pop” a story and increase its popularity. Clicking the button also copies the short URL into a users clipboard so they can easy share the link and drive traffic back to the original URL.

POPrl.com co-founder Sam Bensalem is aiming directly a Digg, telling me this in an email:

All of our new efforts are aimed squarely at Digg.com’s flawed model. POPrl is giving every user/click equal say on what’s making news on the web and not just a select few power users or the tech savvy. POPrl by design is so ubiquitous that most users are not even aware they’re voting up a story.

It’s a neat service, and an interesting twist on the short url model that is increasingly becoming popular. If you want to try popping something, a button for this post below.

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