3 ms·

Tr.im to be Community-Owned

63 points by peter123 17y ago

brk 17y ago
Is just me or do they guys come off as being entirely childish over the "twitter/bit.ly walled garden"? Everything I've seen them post about tr.im lately has a half-dozen whining comments about twitter/bit.ly. If their product has no value outside of Twitter, then what exactly did you expect? If tr.im is a valud URL shortener with some value to it, then it should be able to stand on its own outside of any other 3rd party service. TinyURL has been around for more than a decade, long before Twitter was even a programmers wet dream.
- noodle 17y ago
  i believe their point is that twitter has an open API and encourages app development on top of its platform everywhere it can, but it simultaneously will pick a golden app that creates a huge barrier of entry to the next "good idea" in that area. kind of a silly thing to do, and something i'd complain about a bit if it caused a company of mine to go under.
  - stingraycharles 17y ago
    i believe their point is that twitter has an open API and encourages app development on top of its platform everywhere it can, but it simultaneously will pick a golden app that creates a huge barrier of entry to the next "good idea" in that area. But if Twitter decided to implement their own redirection service, there would be no problem, right ? As in, would you still consider that as an innovation barrier ? I know a lot of the innovation for url redirection services should be looked for in the data mining area, and you need lots of data for data mining. But these tr.im posts all give me the impression they feel like they're entitled to a share of the traffic Twitter generates. They're not, and never will be. Twitter is entitled to decide what they do with their traffic. They could've implemented their own redirection service, they didn't, and decided to go for a single url redirection service. Perhaps precisely to keep the innovation going in that area (url redirection is Bitly's core business, thus they will take the data more seriously), while on the other hand keep the service reliable and predictable. If your entire business depends upon the grace of a single company, and you don't do anything to break your business out of that, you've just got a bad business model which is destined to give you a lot of headaches, and even will make you fail. And yes, I'm looking at you too, AppStore developers. Quit whining already!
    - baddox 17y ago
      Perhaps Twitter should have created their own shortening service, or bought one out (they didn't actually acquire bitly did they?), if only to lessen the intensity of the complaints. It does make sense for them to want a single service, it simplifies things for them and their users. The problem with url shorteners is making your product stand out. Any stable scalable shortener is basically the same as any other. Tr.im's situation is unfortunate, but both logical and predictable.
    - poutine 17y ago
      Not sure why people are saying the whole business was based on tr.im. Was pretty clear in the articles I read that tr.im was a side project for Nambu. Seems that Nambu acknowledged pretty clearly that URL shortening isn't a business.
    - noodle 17y ago
      are you making the argument that no one should be building twitter apps, facebook apps, iphone apps, blackberry apps, windows apps, etc.? after all, they're basing their existence upon the grace of a single company
      - ZachPruckowski 17y ago
        His argument doesn't appear to be "don't build", it appears to be "tread cautiously". If your business model depends on filling an obvious hole in someone else's product, you need to be wary of the idea that the first-party will fill that hole. Joel Spolsky outlines this well in the Stack Overflow podcast, though he's usually talking about plug-in ecosystems. And yes, people making iPhone apps or Facebook apps need to be careful of this. If Facebook decided to build in a friend-ranking feature, the company that makes that Compare People app is hosed. If Apple decides it wants to add ebooks to the iTunes Store, then a lot of iPhone apps are in trouble. Heck, any recent news about App Store shenanigans should make people nervous about their app existing only with Apple's permission. If Apple doesn't like your app (for any reason), it won't get approved. And if Apple decides to pull your app, you're paying for the refunds (and Apple's keeping it's cut of the sales).
- pvg 17y ago
  Childish is almost insulting to children. They're still insisting that twitter somehow deprived them of a business. Oh and that bit.ly's offer of actual cash is a 'publicity stunt'.
  - poutine 17y ago
    $10k for the tr.im domain alone is an offer that would be obviously turned down. Total publicity stunt by bit.ly.
    - Semiapies 17y ago
      In other words, they couldn't get the money they wanted, so they petulantly shut down the service. When they got push-back from doing that, they came up with this scheme. If they actually can get this model up and running with everyone in the world being able to see their data, I'll be curious how that goes, especially as I'm not familiar with what sort of data they keep. Do they track the IPs of people who use tr.im links?
    - ZachPruckowski 17y ago
      I don't see how that's a publicity stunt. It's an offer that seems to take into account "We want out of this business, we're losing money, and we don't think this is at all monetizable". If I straight-up say "I'm desperate and need cash and think this is a piece of junk, and it's costing me money just to hold onto it", then I can expect low-ball offers. Economically speaking, if it's a choice between shutting down and being bought out, anything more than a dollar is a good deal. Yeah, it's a dick move and it's taking advantage of someone, but it's not a publicity stunt.
      - poutine 17y ago
        To understand the situation a bit better you should listen to this Podcast that covered the story behind it which is quite a bit different than what is being spun in TechCrunch. http://techzinglive.com/?p=101 http://techzinglive.com/?p=101
    - pvg 17y ago
- jcapote 17y ago
  Finally someone said it, tr.im comes off as a bunch of whiners. Also, it takes balls accusing someone of a publicity stunt when the only reason anyone cares about tr.im right now is because they pulled the best publicitiy stunt of 2009 ("Were shutting down....Nope, just kidding!")
  - xelfer 17y ago
    And even that was ripped off from tshirthell: http://www.tshirthell.com/hello.php http://www.tshirthell.com/hello.php
riffic 17y ago
hah, what makes you think this guarantees anything? a noble ambition but one with no vision.
pierrefar 17y ago
Disclosure: I built, own and operate Cligs, one of the URL shorteners that was part of the 301works founding announcement last Friday. First off, I don't know what happened between bit.ly/Betworks and tri.m. But I do take offence that 301works is a bit.ly publicity stunt. See, I care most about the Cligs users. To me, 301works is a backup in case something bad happens to Cligs. The backup is operated by an independent (read not bit.ly) service, namely Gnip. I and others insisted on having an independent entity run it for obvious reasons. Each URL shortener specifies the terms of transfering the data to Gnip. It can be anything from what I call "the dead man's will" option of simply locking away the data to be released on the termination of service, all the way to having a completely open data policy that the URL shortener basically says to the world "do as you please". So, at the absolute worst, it's an offsite backup service. In reality, it's much more useful than a mere backup service. For example, if we get the details right, the Gnip API could power a URL-expanding service that takes some load off the URL shorteners' servers; this is just a basic example. I've been talking about such a service with other owners of URL shorteners for a few months, and so there is nothing new about it. We just worked hard now given the anxiety we were seeing from our users. A lot of people worked hard to make it work in a good way, sometimes working at odd hours, to make sure that no one gets the short end of the stick. So please, don't call 301works a bit.ly publicity stunt. It's not. If anyone wants to talk about this more, email me: my first name (first 6 letters of my HN username) at cli.gs.
- earl 17y ago
  While 301works might not be just a bit.ly stunt, it certainly was disproportionately important to bitly not to have a glaring example of the negative effects of URL shorteners staring people in the face -- they encourage link rot and offer the potential for lots of it. The potential for shorteners to disappear and break lots of links is certainly a massive flaw in their business model.
  - poutine 17y ago
    This whole link rot is massively over stated. Most short urls are used on Twitter. Who is reading old Tweets on Twitter? Almost nobody since Twitter is about now, not yesterday. By the time you switch over to some 301works archive the links will have lost 99% of their relevancy.
andreyf 17y ago
This seems interesting: tr.im will offer all link-map data associated with tr.im URLs to anyone that wants it in real-time. This will involve a variety of time-based snapshots of aggregated destination URLs, the number of tr.im URLs created for any given destination URL, and aggregate click data. ... tr.im will begin publishing all statistics and information related to it usage. Its operating cash flow, redirects, URL creation counts — everything — so that the community can have confidence it is on solid footing. I wonder what business models might be affected if this becomes popular...
- poutine 17y ago
  Seems that bit.ly has a fair bit to lose given that similar data to what they're claiming is so valuable is now going to be open to anyone. Wouldn't want to be a bit.ly investor today. Well, I wouldn't want to be a short url investor any day :)
joshu 17y ago
What does "community-owned" mean, exactly?

63 points by peter123 17y ago

brk 17y ago

Is just me or do they guys come off as being entirely childish over the "twitter/bit.ly walled garden"? Everything I've seen them post about tr.im lately has a half-dozen whining comments about twitter/bit.ly. If their product has no value outside of Twitter, then what exactly did you expect? If tr.im is a valud URL shortener with some value to it, then it should be able to stand on its own outside of any other 3rd party service. TinyURL has been around for more than a decade, long before Twitter was even a programmers wet dream.

noodle 17y ago
i believe their point is that twitter has an open API and encourages app development on top of its platform everywhere it can, but it simultaneously will pick a golden app that creates a huge barrier of entry to the next "good idea" in that area. kind of a silly thing to do, and something i'd complain about a bit if it caused a company of mine to go under.
- stingraycharles 17y ago
  i believe their point is that twitter has an open API and encourages app development on top of its platform everywhere it can, but it simultaneously will pick a golden app that creates a huge barrier of entry to the next "good idea" in that area. But if Twitter decided to implement their own redirection service, there would be no problem, right ? As in, would you still consider that as an innovation barrier ? I know a lot of the innovation for url redirection services should be looked for in the data mining area, and you need lots of data for data mining. But these tr.im posts all give me the impression they feel like they're entitled to a share of the traffic Twitter generates. They're not, and never will be. Twitter is entitled to decide what they do with their traffic. They could've implemented their own redirection service, they didn't, and decided to go for a single url redirection service. Perhaps precisely to keep the innovation going in that area (url redirection is Bitly's core business, thus they will take the data more seriously), while on the other hand keep the service reliable and predictable. If your entire business depends upon the grace of a single company, and you don't do anything to break your business out of that, you've just got a bad business model which is destined to give you a lot of headaches, and even will make you fail. And yes, I'm looking at you too, AppStore developers. Quit whining already!
  - baddox 17y ago
    Perhaps Twitter should have created their own shortening service, or bought one out (they didn't actually acquire bitly did they?), if only to lessen the intensity of the complaints. It does make sense for them to want a single service, it simplifies things for them and their users. The problem with url shorteners is making your product stand out. Any stable scalable shortener is basically the same as any other. Tr.im's situation is unfortunate, but both logical and predictable.
  - poutine 17y ago
    Not sure why people are saying the whole business was based on tr.im. Was pretty clear in the articles I read that tr.im was a side project for Nambu. Seems that Nambu acknowledged pretty clearly that URL shortening isn't a business.
  - noodle 17y ago
    are you making the argument that no one should be building twitter apps, facebook apps, iphone apps, blackberry apps, windows apps, etc.? after all, they're basing their existence upon the grace of a single company
    - ZachPruckowski 17y ago
      His argument doesn't appear to be "don't build", it appears to be "tread cautiously". If your business model depends on filling an obvious hole in someone else's product, you need to be wary of the idea that the first-party will fill that hole. Joel Spolsky outlines this well in the Stack Overflow podcast, though he's usually talking about plug-in ecosystems. And yes, people making iPhone apps or Facebook apps need to be careful of this. If Facebook decided to build in a friend-ranking feature, the company that makes that Compare People app is hosed. If Apple decides it wants to add ebooks to the iTunes Store, then a lot of iPhone apps are in trouble. Heck, any recent news about App Store shenanigans should make people nervous about their app existing only with Apple's permission. If Apple doesn't like your app (for any reason), it won't get approved. And if Apple decides to pull your app, you're paying for the refunds (and Apple's keeping it's cut of the sales).
pvg 17y ago
Childish is almost insulting to children. They're still insisting that twitter somehow deprived them of a business. Oh and that bit.ly's offer of actual cash is a 'publicity stunt'.
- poutine 17y ago
  $10k for the tr.im domain alone is an offer that would be obviously turned down. Total publicity stunt by bit.ly.
  - Semiapies 17y ago
    In other words, they couldn't get the money they wanted, so they petulantly shut down the service. When they got push-back from doing that, they came up with this scheme. If they actually can get this model up and running with everyone in the world being able to see their data, I'll be curious how that goes, especially as I'm not familiar with what sort of data they keep. Do they track the IPs of people who use tr.im links?
  - ZachPruckowski 17y ago
    I don't see how that's a publicity stunt. It's an offer that seems to take into account "We want out of this business, we're losing money, and we don't think this is at all monetizable". If I straight-up say "I'm desperate and need cash and think this is a piece of junk, and it's costing me money just to hold onto it", then I can expect low-ball offers. Economically speaking, if it's a choice between shutting down and being bought out, anything more than a dollar is a good deal. Yeah, it's a dick move and it's taking advantage of someone, but it's not a publicity stunt.
    - poutine 17y ago
      To understand the situation a bit better you should listen to this Podcast that covered the story behind it which is quite a bit different than what is being spun in TechCrunch. http://techzinglive.com/?p=101 http://techzinglive.com/?p=101
  - pvg 17y ago
jcapote 17y ago
Finally someone said it, tr.im comes off as a bunch of whiners. Also, it takes balls accusing someone of a publicity stunt when the only reason anyone cares about tr.im right now is because they pulled the best publicitiy stunt of 2009 ("Were shutting down....Nope, just kidding!")
- xelfer 17y ago
  And even that was ripped off from tshirthell: http://www.tshirthell.com/hello.php http://www.tshirthell.com/hello.php

riffic 17y ago

hah, what makes you think this guarantees anything? a noble ambition but one with no vision.

pierrefar 17y ago

Disclosure: I built, own and operate Cligs, one of the URL shorteners that was part of the 301works founding announcement last Friday. First off, I don't know what happened between bit.ly/Betworks and tri.m. But I do take offence that 301works is a bit.ly publicity stunt. See, I care most about the Cligs users. To me, 301works is a backup in case something bad happens to Cligs. The backup is operated by an independent (read not bit.ly) service, namely Gnip. I and others insisted on having an independent entity run it for obvious reasons. Each URL shortener specifies the terms of transfering the data to Gnip. It can be anything from what I call "the dead man's will" option of simply locking away the data to be released on the termination of service, all the way to having a completely open data policy that the URL shortener basically says to the world "do as you please". So, at the absolute worst, it's an offsite backup service. In reality, it's much more useful than a mere backup service. For example, if we get the details right, the Gnip API could power a URL-expanding service that takes some load off the URL shorteners' servers; this is just a basic example. I've been talking about such a service with other owners of URL shorteners for a few months, and so there is nothing new about it. We just worked hard now given the anxiety we were seeing from our users. A lot of people worked hard to make it work in a good way, sometimes working at odd hours, to make sure that no one gets the short end of the stick. So please, don't call 301works a bit.ly publicity stunt. It's not. If anyone wants to talk about this more, email me: my first name (first 6 letters of my HN username) at cli.gs.

earl 17y ago
While 301works might not be just a bit.ly stunt, it certainly was disproportionately important to bitly not to have a glaring example of the negative effects of URL shorteners staring people in the face -- they encourage link rot and offer the potential for lots of it. The potential for shorteners to disappear and break lots of links is certainly a massive flaw in their business model.
- poutine 17y ago
  This whole link rot is massively over stated. Most short urls are used on Twitter. Who is reading old Tweets on Twitter? Almost nobody since Twitter is about now, not yesterday. By the time you switch over to some 301works archive the links will have lost 99% of their relevancy.

andreyf 17y ago

This seems interesting: tr.im will offer all link-map data associated with tr.im URLs to anyone that wants it in real-time. This will involve a variety of time-based snapshots of aggregated destination URLs, the number of tr.im URLs created for any given destination URL, and aggregate click data. ... tr.im will begin publishing all statistics and information related to it usage. Its operating cash flow, redirects, URL creation counts — everything — so that the community can have confidence it is on solid footing. I wonder what business models might be affected if this becomes popular...

poutine 17y ago
Seems that bit.ly has a fair bit to lose given that similar data to what they're claiming is so valuable is now going to be open to anyone. Wouldn't want to be a bit.ly investor today. Well, I wouldn't want to be a short url investor any day :)

joshu 17y ago

What does "community-owned" mean, exactly?