6 ms·

Tr.im Resurrected

35 points by chris24 17y ago

Semiapies 17y ago
"This was not a public-relations stunt. At all." Please. Why exactly should anyone have any trust in such a statement from people who shut down their service with little or no advance warning, but could bring it back up "indefinitely" after some "appeals"?
- Banzai10 17y ago
  Actually they didn't shutdown their servers, they gave a warning that they would be shutting down by the end of the year.
  - Semiapies 17y ago
    True. I guess I was one of the people thrown by their "effective immediately" notice that they had to clarify, and I hadn't seen the clarification. It was only a partial shutdown. Still, I remain skeptical; this company hasn't earned much trust from me.
  - tlrobinson 17y ago
    They shut down everything except redirects for existing URLs. You couldn't create new URLs, or view statistics of your URLs.
- Kadin 17y ago
  They weren't shutting down their service; they were actually being very responsible about it -- they were going to stop taking new URLs for redirection, but continue to maintain the previously-created ones until the end of the year. It's not like they suddenly announced "we're pulling the plug, screw you all." It seemed like a considered decision, made from a position where they could afford to wind down the service over 6 months. I think their decision to not shut down may be frankly irresponsible. Their reasons for closing seemed fair: bit.ly has a monopoly on URL-shortening due to Twitter; there's really not a market for more than one or two URL-shortening services; there's no clear way to monetize URL-shortening unless you're the dominant player (and can sell stats); any sale to a third party risked turning the service into something evil that they had ethical problems with; keeping the service open would just burn money and effort better spent on other things. All, to my mind, valid reasons for closing. Deciding to reopen (or not close) because a bunch of people complained -- people who aren't going to solve any of those fundamental issues -- that seems like the questionable decision. They were doing the right thing, but seemingly got talked out of it. It doesn't make sense.
  - Semiapies 17y ago
    1) Suddenly not taking new URLs is a partial shutdown. 2) It is a questionable decision that doesn't make much sense. One of the few scenarios that seems remotely sensible is that this was an attempt to attract attention, particularly from investors who might be interested in a service with such an enthusiastic following that they'd "appeal" to the company to keep it going. 3) If not investors, then buyers: http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/08/10/trim-cuts-off-bitlys-301works-idea-wants-to-sell/ http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/08/10/trim-cuts-off-bitlys-30...
  - alain94040 17y ago
    there's no clear way to monetize URL-shortening unless you're the dominant player (and can sell stats); How much money is Google making from selling all the stats that they gathered on people's behaviors, cicks, etc.? The problem with URL shorteners is that there is no space to put ads.
Oompa 17y ago
Not a PR stunt? Sure seems like one from my perspective.
- axod 17y ago
  If it is, it's inventive. And I'll bet it results in a good hike in traffic+interest.
  - aaronblohowiak 17y ago
    Kids these days! In fact, laws were passed to stop the practice of having a "going out of business sale" when the business was not failing because it was once a common advertising strategy. In some states, you even have to register such sales with the Attorney General
    - kwamenum86 17y ago
      This was not exactly a going out of business sale though.
    - likpok 17y ago
      I believe this was also to combat a 'scam' where store owners (the example I heard was Persian carpets) would mark things up, and then have a going out of business sale that would mark them down to above the original price.
    - paul9290 17y ago
      Yeah but there is a law against anti-competitive actions too, like Twitter not allowing users choice within their profile setting on the site to select shortener of their choice. Also, Apple and At&t rejecting apps that clearly are rejected because the app is their competition(Skype for one). This is all new territory and these companies might be the impetus for much needed precedence!
      - jacquesm 17y ago
        That's an interesting argument, if Twitter is free to choose who they do business with then Apple should be too or vv. I can't quite put my finger on why I come down on Twitter being able to prefer bit.ly if they want and Apple not being able to 'prefer' at&t... Something doesn't jive here.
jacquesm 17y ago
What bothers me about the whole tr.im story is that they are basically complaining they are losing money hand over fist at the same time that they are saying that twitter will send their traffic to bit.ly. So, what's the problem then ? Seems like your cost just went down, you should be happy about it, not complain. If you can't make money at traffic level X because the model you are pursuing is broken then at level N*X you are in much worse shape. And yet, they seem to want to be in much worse shape...
- mrkurt 17y ago
  With the caveat that I found the general whiny tone annoying: Direct costs may go down, since they have less URLs to worry about. But value goes down as well, since they have less data to mine. There may be some critical mass of data required to have anything of value.
  - jacquesm 17y ago
    They're complaining about development costs and bandwidth costs. I don't buy it. A url shortener is relatively trivial to operate (at least, compared to some of the stuff I'm doing right now). It works, or it doesn't, once you've got it there isn't much you can do to make it better or add features. So development costs are almost a one-time affair and it seems they had already done that. What's left is the bandwidth cost. A Mbit is about $5 /month in bulk. The average 'GET' reguest from a device is maybe 500 bytes, the answer, the redirect is maybe another 500 bytes. So say 1 Kbyte in total (generous!). 1Mbit / sec = 128 Kbyte, so that is roughly 100 requests / second for $5 /month. Serverload is trivial, a single table with a unique key, you can do 1000's of queries like that per second on a single box. It is a trivially parallel problem, simply distribute all urls across all machines. A single box could push maybe 100K requests / second using varnishd or some other front end cache (tr.im uses nginx), so that's maybe 800Kbit/sec out of one box. You'll need a bunch of IPs otherwise you'll run out of sockets and you'll need some memory for the cache. Calculate in some margin and you can cut that down to maybe 500 Mbit/sec, so that box would cost you $2500 / month and it would handle a staggering 62500*86400 = 5 billion requests / day. No way tr.im is at that level, more likely a few tens of millions of requests per day, reduce bandwidth costs accordingly, say $500 to $1000. It wouldn't take more than a bunch of google ads displayed to the makers of the urls or a donation to keep a service like that going, that's not a whole lot of $ to make on a site. One of my sites which converts absolutely horrible does that kind of money on 27000 visitors / day (mostly from Finland, don't ask...). This will never be a business, and personally I really don't understand why the likes of twitter do not give a short url out on their own service. But it also does not cost a fortune to run, that's bs. And if you want to create 'value' you should do something a little more sticky than a url shortener, it literally is a throwaway relationship with your audience. And if you lock them out for a couple of days because you can't make up your mind if you're going to sink or swim you have really tossed your investment into the water.
there 17y ago
darn.
deleted 17y ago
[deleted]
jasonlbaptiste 17y ago
why is this site consistently relevant? It's a minority url shortener. If it were bit.ly or tinyurl, id understand. Even then, it depends on the spin. Flag button activated!
thisduck 17y ago
They keep listing bit.ly's monopoly by way of Twitter. But there is a better solution to the whole URL shortening issue, how about Twitter assigned a fixed length to URLs. So a url in your tweet is say 5 or 6 characters. And it always converts to ">link" (that's 5 characters). Done, the URL shortening destroying the internet problem is solved. We've had URL shorteners forever, they've only become an issue because of Twitter. Twitter should just do away with it all.
- stingraycharles 17y ago
  Stop making sense! The only solution would be for Twitter to acquire Bitly and their complex code base, how else are the inflated prices going to be justified ? http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/03/30/if-bitly-is-worth-8-million-tinyurl-is-worth-at-least-46-million/ http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/03/30/if-bitly-is-worth-8-mil...
figital 17y ago
They could save space by letting me choose my own default URL shortener. I've got my personal domain listed on my twitter page. Say my home page is http://example.com http://example.com. Just put something like <123456> into your tweet and your client would interpret that as http:/example.com/12346. Otherwise they are the new Microsoft. ;)
michael_dorfman 17y ago
Since the tr.im saga has brought url shorteners to everybody's mind: anybody have an idea for a winning business model? I can't seem to think of one...
- cookiecaper 17y ago
  All I can think of is a subscription-based model that would aggregate all of the URLs and give you stats on it. Like, $5/mo for a URL shortener that lets you see how much something has been clicked on, who clicked, when, and so on. This would also serve as a history of shortened URLs. But really something like this is probably best rolled into the services that require them, like Twitter. Twitter should provide it, I think.
  - nir 17y ago
    Bit.ly offers this functionality, for free. I think bit.ly are the only ones that have a chance of making real money. Their model is: 1. Build a very good URL shortening service 2. Have a close relationship with Twitter, get them to choose you as their URL shortener 3. Hope Twitter will get bought and then buy you, like they bought Summize for search.
    - briansmith 17y ago
      IIRC, the same investors that own Twitter also own bit.ly.
    - cookiecaper 17y ago
      Models that are based on "hope I get bought out" are not viable imo. All business plans are obviously dependent on certain favorable conditions (like finding customers), but it's a lot easier to find some customers than it is to convince one of the very few potential acquirers to first acquire a business that provides your functions and then second to acquire you instead of a competitor.
      - nir 17y ago
adrinavarro 17y ago
Traffic looks attractive, but it's a problem when you don't get any benefits at all. By the way, I still don't see how is bit.ly going to stay alive. But what if we had our own url shorteners? I could have my own shortener on my own domain (twitter won't re-shorten it), so there wouldn't be any privacity or volatility issues. Anyway, we're still "lazy" people... so we have to live with it.
- briansmith 17y ago
  Twitter won't re-shorten it now, but that could change at any time. What if Twitter wrote every URL to a bit.ly URL regardless of length? Would anybody stop using Twitter because of it? I doubt it. If they can find a way to make money w/ bit.ly then why wouldn't they?
tptacek 17y ago
I'm really meant to believe that Twitter can be expected to foster an ecosystem of URL shorteners? Can I instead be pissed that Twitter hasn't simply ended these efforts by not counting URL characters?

35 points by chris24 17y ago

"This was not a public-relations stunt. At all." Please. Why exactly should anyone have any trust in such a statement from people who shut down their service with little or no advance warning, but could bring it back up "indefinitely" after some "appeals"?

Banzai10 17y ago
Actually they didn't shutdown their servers, they gave a warning that they would be shutting down by the end of the year.
- Semiapies 17y ago
  True. I guess I was one of the people thrown by their "effective immediately" notice that they had to clarify, and I hadn't seen the clarification. It was only a partial shutdown. Still, I remain skeptical; this company hasn't earned much trust from me.
- tlrobinson 17y ago
  They shut down everything except redirects for existing URLs. You couldn't create new URLs, or view statistics of your URLs.
Kadin 17y ago
They weren't shutting down their service; they were actually being very responsible about it -- they were going to stop taking new URLs for redirection, but continue to maintain the previously-created ones until the end of the year. It's not like they suddenly announced "we're pulling the plug, screw you all." It seemed like a considered decision, made from a position where they could afford to wind down the service over 6 months. I think their decision to not shut down may be frankly irresponsible. Their reasons for closing seemed fair: bit.ly has a monopoly on URL-shortening due to Twitter; there's really not a market for more than one or two URL-shortening services; there's no clear way to monetize URL-shortening unless you're the dominant player (and can sell stats); any sale to a third party risked turning the service into something evil that they had ethical problems with; keeping the service open would just burn money and effort better spent on other things. All, to my mind, valid reasons for closing. Deciding to reopen (or not close) because a bunch of people complained -- people who aren't going to solve any of those fundamental issues -- that seems like the questionable decision. They were doing the right thing, but seemingly got talked out of it. It doesn't make sense.
- Semiapies 17y ago
  1) Suddenly not taking new URLs is a partial shutdown. 2) It is a questionable decision that doesn't make much sense. One of the few scenarios that seems remotely sensible is that this was an attempt to attract attention, particularly from investors who might be interested in a service with such an enthusiastic following that they'd "appeal" to the company to keep it going. 3) If not investors, then buyers: http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/08/10/trim-cuts-off-bitlys-301works-idea-wants-to-sell/ http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/08/10/trim-cuts-off-bitlys-30...
- alain94040 17y ago
  there's no clear way to monetize URL-shortening unless you're the dominant player (and can sell stats); How much money is Google making from selling all the stats that they gathered on people's behaviors, cicks, etc.? The problem with URL shorteners is that there is no space to put ads.

Oompa 17y ago

Not a PR stunt? Sure seems like one from my perspective.

axod 17y ago
If it is, it's inventive. And I'll bet it results in a good hike in traffic+interest.
- aaronblohowiak 17y ago
  Kids these days! In fact, laws were passed to stop the practice of having a "going out of business sale" when the business was not failing because it was once a common advertising strategy. In some states, you even have to register such sales with the Attorney General
  - kwamenum86 17y ago
    This was not exactly a going out of business sale though.
  - likpok 17y ago
    I believe this was also to combat a 'scam' where store owners (the example I heard was Persian carpets) would mark things up, and then have a going out of business sale that would mark them down to above the original price.
  - paul9290 17y ago
    Yeah but there is a law against anti-competitive actions too, like Twitter not allowing users choice within their profile setting on the site to select shortener of their choice. Also, Apple and At&t rejecting apps that clearly are rejected because the app is their competition(Skype for one). This is all new territory and these companies might be the impetus for much needed precedence!
    - jacquesm 17y ago
      That's an interesting argument, if Twitter is free to choose who they do business with then Apple should be too or vv. I can't quite put my finger on why I come down on Twitter being able to prefer bit.ly if they want and Apple not being able to 'prefer' at&t... Something doesn't jive here.

jacquesm 17y ago

What bothers me about the whole tr.im story is that they are basically complaining they are losing money hand over fist at the same time that they are saying that twitter will send their traffic to bit.ly. So, what's the problem then ? Seems like your cost just went down, you should be happy about it, not complain. If you can't make money at traffic level X because the model you are pursuing is broken then at level N*X you are in much worse shape. And yet, they seem to want to be in much worse shape...

mrkurt 17y ago
With the caveat that I found the general whiny tone annoying: Direct costs may go down, since they have less URLs to worry about. But value goes down as well, since they have less data to mine. There may be some critical mass of data required to have anything of value.
- jacquesm 17y ago
  They're complaining about development costs and bandwidth costs. I don't buy it. A url shortener is relatively trivial to operate (at least, compared to some of the stuff I'm doing right now). It works, or it doesn't, once you've got it there isn't much you can do to make it better or add features. So development costs are almost a one-time affair and it seems they had already done that. What's left is the bandwidth cost. A Mbit is about $5 /month in bulk. The average 'GET' reguest from a device is maybe 500 bytes, the answer, the redirect is maybe another 500 bytes. So say 1 Kbyte in total (generous!). 1Mbit / sec = 128 Kbyte, so that is roughly 100 requests / second for $5 /month. Serverload is trivial, a single table with a unique key, you can do 1000's of queries like that per second on a single box. It is a trivially parallel problem, simply distribute all urls across all machines. A single box could push maybe 100K requests / second using varnishd or some other front end cache (tr.im uses nginx), so that's maybe 800Kbit/sec out of one box. You'll need a bunch of IPs otherwise you'll run out of sockets and you'll need some memory for the cache. Calculate in some margin and you can cut that down to maybe 500 Mbit/sec, so that box would cost you $2500 / month and it would handle a staggering 62500*86400 = 5 billion requests / day. No way tr.im is at that level, more likely a few tens of millions of requests per day, reduce bandwidth costs accordingly, say $500 to $1000. It wouldn't take more than a bunch of google ads displayed to the makers of the urls or a donation to keep a service like that going, that's not a whole lot of $ to make on a site. One of my sites which converts absolutely horrible does that kind of money on 27000 visitors / day (mostly from Finland, don't ask...). This will never be a business, and personally I really don't understand why the likes of twitter do not give a short url out on their own service. But it also does not cost a fortune to run, that's bs. And if you want to create 'value' you should do something a little more sticky than a url shortener, it literally is a throwaway relationship with your audience. And if you lock them out for a couple of days because you can't make up your mind if you're going to sink or swim you have really tossed your investment into the water.

there 17y ago

darn.

deleted 17y ago

[deleted]

jasonlbaptiste 17y ago

why is this site consistently relevant? It's a minority url shortener. If it were bit.ly or tinyurl, id understand. Even then, it depends on the spin. Flag button activated!

thisduck 17y ago

They keep listing bit.ly's monopoly by way of Twitter. But there is a better solution to the whole URL shortening issue, how about Twitter assigned a fixed length to URLs. So a url in your tweet is say 5 or 6 characters. And it always converts to ">link" (that's 5 characters). Done, the URL shortening destroying the internet problem is solved. We've had URL shorteners forever, they've only become an issue because of Twitter. Twitter should just do away with it all.

stingraycharles 17y ago
Stop making sense! The only solution would be for Twitter to acquire Bitly and their complex code base, how else are the inflated prices going to be justified ? http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/03/30/if-bitly-is-worth-8-million-tinyurl-is-worth-at-least-46-million/ http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/03/30/if-bitly-is-worth-8-mil...

figital 17y ago

They could save space by letting me choose my own default URL shortener. I've got my personal domain listed on my twitter page. Say my home page is http://example.com http://example.com. Just put something like <123456> into your tweet and your client would interpret that as http:/example.com/12346. Otherwise they are the new Microsoft. ;)

michael_dorfman 17y ago

Since the tr.im saga has brought url shorteners to everybody's mind: anybody have an idea for a winning business model? I can't seem to think of one...

cookiecaper 17y ago
All I can think of is a subscription-based model that would aggregate all of the URLs and give you stats on it. Like, $5/mo for a URL shortener that lets you see how much something has been clicked on, who clicked, when, and so on. This would also serve as a history of shortened URLs. But really something like this is probably best rolled into the services that require them, like Twitter. Twitter should provide it, I think.
- nir 17y ago
  Bit.ly offers this functionality, for free. I think bit.ly are the only ones that have a chance of making real money. Their model is: 1. Build a very good URL shortening service 2. Have a close relationship with Twitter, get them to choose you as their URL shortener 3. Hope Twitter will get bought and then buy you, like they bought Summize for search.
  - briansmith 17y ago
    IIRC, the same investors that own Twitter also own bit.ly.
  - cookiecaper 17y ago
    Models that are based on "hope I get bought out" are not viable imo. All business plans are obviously dependent on certain favorable conditions (like finding customers), but it's a lot easier to find some customers than it is to convince one of the very few potential acquirers to first acquire a business that provides your functions and then second to acquire you instead of a competitor.
    - nir 17y ago

adrinavarro 17y ago

Traffic looks attractive, but it's a problem when you don't get any benefits at all. By the way, I still don't see how is bit.ly going to stay alive. But what if we had our own url shorteners? I could have my own shortener on my own domain (twitter won't re-shorten it), so there wouldn't be any privacity or volatility issues. Anyway, we're still "lazy" people... so we have to live with it.

briansmith 17y ago
Twitter won't re-shorten it now, but that could change at any time. What if Twitter wrote every URL to a bit.ly URL regardless of length? Would anybody stop using Twitter because of it? I doubt it. If they can find a way to make money w/ bit.ly then why wouldn't they?

tptacek 17y ago

I'm really meant to believe that Twitter can be expected to foster an ecosystem of URL shorteners? Can I instead be pissed that Twitter hasn't simply ended these efforts by not counting URL characters?