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tr.im - the first of many to go?

by n7 Studios
18 replies
tr.im your URLs was a URL shortening / redirect service.

They've announced today that they're shutting the service down, although existing URL's and the API will remain active until the end of the year.

Reading their blog, it's clear that the costs became too much for them to justify running the service, and that they couldn't find a revenue stream. They were also surprised at there being nobody wanting to take the service over - not to mention bit.ly being the standard URL shortener used by Twitter.

Sites like tr.im annoy me - a lot. It's clear there was no plan from day 1 on how the service would generate revenue - it was an afterthought, too little, too late. Then they exclaim surprise that nobody wants to buy them out. They talk about 'business reality' - when the reality was they never had a business, simply a free service that they failed to monetize.

Seriously, did we not learn from the last dot com boom and bust?

My biggest concern? They're pursuing larger opportunities. Let's hope they have revenue included...
#trim
  • Profile picture of the author abelacts
    Honestly, if you look deeper, it's fact of life: businesses come and go. Nothing to be surprised about. And it's human nature to look for "greener pasture."
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  • Profile picture of the author ltdraper
    Originally Posted by n7 Studios View Post

    Sites like tr.im annoy me - a lot. It's clear there was no plan from day 1 on how the service would generate revenue - it was an afterthought, too little, too late.
    Sorta like Twitter?

    If you can't describe your business model to your grandmother in 15 seconds, it's not going to work.
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    Nothing to see here, move along...

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    • Profile picture of the author gacott
      Originally Posted by ltdraper View Post

      Sorta like Twitter?

      If you can't describe your business model to your grandmother in 15 seconds, it's not going to work.
      Sometimes you don't have to be able to. If you can build it and convince somebody with money that it has value, sometimes that's all the business model you need.

      I developed large scale open source projects for years. For many the model was gather as many customers as possible in a strong niche market, sell to the highest bidder. Their model was clear also. They are buying customers for existing products and services. Customers that have already been qualified and in our case, always had a ton of demographic research to go along with it.

      I would say that Twitter most likely fits this quite well.

      Garret
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  • Profile picture of the author twitterguru
    I don't see why this should annoy you. Sometimes people just go for it - and it doesn't work out. It was a great idea and they got relatively popular, just failed to make any money. It happens and good for them for at least getting a popular service out there.
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    • Profile picture of the author n7 Studios
      Originally Posted by twitterguru View Post

      I don't see why this should annoy you. Sometimes people just go for it - and it doesn't work out. It was a great idea and they got relatively popular, just failed to make any money. It happens and good for them for at least getting a popular service out there.
      Sorry, I misworded my post slightly. I guess surprised would have been a better choice. We've been here before with startups created off the back of a fag packet, with most failing.

      I'm all for giving things a shot - how else will you know if you're going to succeed - but when there's no plan in terms of revenue or monetization, and then they state their surprise at nobody being interested in buying their 'business', the facts are already staring them in the face.

      And even when they try to monetise - they're limited in what they can do. Twitter tried pushing the 'business pays' model, which never got off the ground. Thankfully, they have people investing because they perceive a value - but investment stops one day.

      As I said, history repeating itself.
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  • Profile picture of the author Akky
    It was a nice site, I hope someone take over the site and bring it back to action with some new monetizing methods.
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  • Profile picture of the author Alexa Smith
    Banned
    [DELETED]
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  • Profile picture of the author Andy Crofford
    Bit.ly has offered to host Tr.im's URL mappings so that all these links are not lost:

    SHORTURL SAVIOR: Bit.ly Swoops in to Save Tr.im
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  • Profile picture of the author Devon Brown
    How does bit.ly generate revenue? Couldn't tr.im just followed others footsteps?
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  • Profile picture of the author CliveG
    A significant proportion of start ups fail even if they have a "good" business plan. Although it is annoying you have to put it behind you and move on. At least you have not paid them a huge amount of money for the service.
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  • Profile picture of the author Jesus Perez
    This is why I cloak all my own links on my own server. I feel for anyone that has to go through hundreds of links manually and change them.
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  • Profile picture of the author greff
    I used tr.im often in Twitter. (often being 5-10 times a day)

    I became suspicious about the clickthrough numbers reported by both tr.im and other URL shorteners. Their numbers just do not jive with my counter numbers which show far fewer clickthroughs. I know that tr.im told us that some of those were bots, but even their real clickthrough numbers where way high.

    Then I read an article that counters are at fault for this discrepancy. Who to believe?

    But, hey, there are a lot of good reasons to use the bit.ly type of services. Remember tinyurl.com? My son met the owner in Minneapolis one day. He told my son he was making a "good living". I think he has ads or Adsense on his site. Don't know how bit.ly or tr.im did to make money.
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  • Profile picture of the author jakesellers
    I wrote a url shortening service a couple years ago, but the only ideas I could come up with to monetize it were cookie stuffing and/or clickthrough pops so didn't bother rolling it out.
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  • Profile picture of the author rapidscc
    Honestly, I think the real reason why tr.im was shut down is because they just gave up.

    There are tons of ways to monitize it..Being one of the biggest shortening service for Twitter they should just have placed ad spaces on the main page and on the url's that they were shortening..

    There are several services now that frames the destination url and displays add on top right?

    I think they could have made something out of it if they did that..and also since they said that ten's of thousands come to them everyday for URL shortening they could have created a service similar to revtwt. Revtwt doesn't seem to run out of advertisers..

    I visited their site, and what I perceived from the message posted is that they are blaming others for the failure.. In my opinion when things like that happen there's no one else to blame except the people behind it. The message somehow gave a hint of someone having a tantrum..
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  • Profile picture of the author gacott
    Well, they are going open source now, we'll see what that brings.

    Garret
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  • Profile picture of the author Asher
    Are you sure it's dead?

    BORN AGAIN: Tr.im Comes Back From the Dead

    And...

    tr.im URLs | tr.im Resurrected

    Asher
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