Tr.im Cuts Off Bit.ly’s 301works concept, Wants to Sell

August 10, 2009 ·Filed Under Technology News

Yesterday, upon hearing that the URL shortening service Tr.im was shutting down, Bit.ly, the largest URL-shortener, stepped in with a proposal. The offer wasn’t to buy the service, but rather to propose that Bit.ly host Tr.im’s URL-mappings indefinitely, or that they join the 301works.com project, a sort of archive for shortened web hyperlinks. Tr.im parent Nambu Networks has rejected that ideas, and instead wants to sell the service, Bit.ly writes today.

And that’s too poor, considering while the view wasn’t a perfect solution, it would have at least saved many of the URL’s shortened with Tr.im that are now scheduled to stop working by the end of the year. Bit.ly’s concept behind 301works is essentially to let all of the URL-shorteners bulk-upload urls every week, which would soon after be stored on that service. “We thought that was a useful concept — something that was inexpensive to execute and urgent for the industry,” Bit.ly writes.

But when the concept was first proposed back in April, Tr.im and the other URL-shorteners turned it down initially. The main problem is thought to be privacy (some shortened-links are private on some services). But Bit.ly additionally thinks the reluctance to get on board may be related to

one company ruling all of that, so it has reached out to some non-profits in the hope that they can take by.

The reason why Bit.ly wants that 301works service should be pretty clear. There’s a large uproar right now following Tr.im’s demise on whether or not anyone should actually be using URL-shorteners just in case something like that happens. Even the all-powerful Twitter-endorsed Bit.ly could go away some day, is the thought. But an archive of these urls that is maintained outside any one service could help put people’s minds at ease.

Bit.ly says that using Amazon’s servers, it could have 301works up and running in a matter of weeks.

Again, that all sounds nice, but whether the other guys don’t get on board, which Tr.im clearly isn’t ready to do, it’s kind of pointless. Bit.ly says that whether someone does buy Tr.im and wants to use 301works, to let them know. Clearly, Bit.ly has no interest in buying the service.

[photo: flickr/russeljsmith]

Crunch Network: CrunchGear drool by the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.


Comments

Got something to say?