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.

Url shortener Tr.im saved from death, but still serves as a serious wake up call is a post from: The Inquisitr

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.

Twitter has your back as it begins blocking nasty URLs is a post from: The Inquisitr

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.

POPrl.com adds API, widgets and embedded video is a post from: The Inquisitr