Update: Tr.im has apparently had a change of heart, and decided to remain functional. On the company blog, Tr.im’s founder says:
We have restored tr.im, and re-opened its website. We have been absolutely overwhelmed by the popular response, and the countless public and private appeals I have received to keep tr.im alive.
We have answered those pleas. Nambu will keep tr.im operating going forward, indefinitely, while we continue to consider our options in regards to tr.im’s future.
Either way, Tr.im has managed to bring a seemingly important subject into the spotlight, and it is still one worth thinking about.
Original Article: Shortened URLs come in quite handy when you want to share a link, but the URL is simply too long. Twitter’s rise to popularity has carried the popularity of such services right up with it. Naturally, when you have a 140-character limit, such a tool becomes much more in-demand.
Over the weekend, URL shortening service Tr.im announced that it was closing down shop. This is by no means the most popular service of its kind. But the big story here is not that we’re losing Tr.im. It’s that the idea of losing Tr.im brings up a much broader issue in what happens to all of those shortened URLs?
Tell Murdok readers what you think about the situation.
“When these services go away, tens of thousands of links on the web simply stop working,” says Mashable’s Pete Cashmore. “Some sites will lose hundreds of inbound links, and the traffic that comes with them.”
“If Tr.im shuts down its servers, millions of links will simply die,” says Mashable’s Ben Parr separately. “Poof, just like that. Someone could even buy Tr.im and redirect all the links to spam, porn, or malware.”
Tr.im says in its announcement that all of its URLs will continue to redirect until December 31. Parr thinks someone will buy Tr.im before the end of the year. Bit.ly, Twitter’s go-to shortener has a project called 301works, (which archives URLs) told the publication that they offered to host Tr.im’s URL mappings, but it is not clear yet if anything will come of that.
But once again, the issue lies on a much larger plane than that of Tr.im. If more of these sites fail for any reason or get hacked, the web could turn into link bedlam. “Millions upon millions of links could suddenly vanish, leaving users confused and a possibly uncleanable mess,” says Parr.
How Big is the Problem Really?
Or perhaps we’re sensationalizing this a little bit. There’s no question that there are many, many shortened URLs out there in circulation, but if they all stopped working, what would happen? Let’s look at where they’re being used – Twitter. In a hypothetic scenario where no URL shortening service works any longer, people will stop using them from that point on. That eliminates the further spread of problem-links.
That leaves you with all of the ones out there that people have posted in the past. That means while they are out there to be clicked on, they will become more and more buried as time goes on. Twitter Search is after all about what is happening “right now.”
I don’t mean to play down the issue too much. It is definitely an issue, and there would still be some hiccups experienced by many webmasters. Twitter does drive a lot of traffic for a lot of people. But most of that traffic I would guess comes from fresh tweets, rather than tweets that are days or weeks old that would carry broken links.
I fully acknowledge that Twitter is not the only source of URL shortened-links, but it is easily the largest. Links could stop working at many places around the web, but it’s not going to be a mass web apocalypse. Google results aren’t going to stop offering legitimate links.
Is the 140-Character Limit Bad for the Web?
If anything, the issue casts yet another shadow of vulnerability on Twitter, and at a time when it has already received mass media attention over a Denial-of-Service attack. Without functioning links, Twitter becomes a lot less useful for many users. Does Twitter want to depend on third party services for such functionality as it continues to grow? Is rethinking the 140-character limit in order?
Twitter does have a relationship with Bit.ly, which is alive and well, but maybe Twitter just needs its own such service, just so it (or its users at least) doesn’t have to rely on others. But what would happen to all of those if Twitter had its own shortener? Without such high demand, would they continue to thrive? If not, they could add to the problem with that many more compromised links.
I don’t know. I don’t claim to have the answers. The whole thing does raise some important questions about the web though. If Twitter is to become a long-term major player in communication on the web, some things are going to need to be addressed. Any thoughts on the situation? Please share them.
