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With so many URL shortening services out there, this was bound to happen to at least one of them: Trim is shutting down. According to a blog post by parent company Nambu Networks, it was an expensive and fruitless effort."We simply cannot find a way to justify continuing to work on it, or pay its network costs, which are not inconsequential," the post read.
Those expenses may have been particularly encumbering recently when Trim was hit by a denial-of-service attack last week that knocked it offline.
Where does that leave us with any URL shortener service?
Depending on which alphabet the subscriber has configured in the handset, this leads to the maximum individual Short Message sizes of 160 7-bit characters, 140 8-bit characters, or 70 16-bit characters (including spaces).
[en.wikipedia.org...]
It used to be 128 characters, 140 is an improvement.
Therefore the need for short URLs is driven entirely by the maximum amount of data you can shove into a single packet of unused data space within the GSM network telephony protocol.
Some phones use email messaging as the backbone of their SMS strategy which removes this silly limitation.
However, the minute you encounter an SMS to Email gateway, the 140 limit applies again so you could either truncate the email to 140, send multiple SMS packets, or just limit the whole system to be 140 for universal conformity.
Therefore, Twitter is just complying with the minimum common denominator and if you look at the twitter API you'll see it's capable of 255 character messages but not all of your followers will be able to read them.
So even with expansion slated for 255 characters I don't see room for long 80 character URLs.
The tiny url appears to be destines to be with us for quite some time.
So even with expansion slated for 255 characters I don't see room for long 80 character URLs.
Remember, 5 of those 255 are reserved for 2 spaces and 3 dots so 250 is maximum before truncation to 247 and loss of data from that point forward. Keep it to 250 or less.
80 character URIs? How about 130 characters? Whee...
I know the secret sauce. Don't get me started. :)
[edited by: encyclo at 10:49 pm (utc) on Aug. 11, 2009]
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.
This was not a public-relations stunt. At all.
^ Heh!
longevity of their links
I don't think most people using tiny URLs in twitter are very concerned as long as the URL lives a few days at most.
It's not like it's a blog or forum post with implied longevity, it's an instant message with the emphasis heavily on instant.
As long as my followers get to read it today, that's good enough for me.
Besides, if people bookmark the link they bookmark the real link, not the tiny url.
Boo hoo. It's called competition, rise above it.
I don't think most people using tiny URLs in twitter are very concerned as long as the URL lives a few days at most.
I suppose, if you're shortening links that belong to other sites. But I'm shortening links to my own sites.
And, Twitter feed pages are spidered by Google. What you tweet today, including its shortened links, live forever somewhere on the internet.
However, the concept that "example.com/iowa-corn-harvest-up-82-percent.html" is any safer than "bit.ly/00000" is quite silly because black hat spamming hackers just love injecting those long SEO paths into sites
The endpoint of the url may or may not be any safer than any other url. The point is not hiding the path itself, but rather the host name.
However, it is about disclosure/knowledge *before* clicking. With a full url, a reader can see whether the site is one that he recognises and *trusts* before clicking.
Never mind noscript or its equivalent in IE, or preview tools, or any of that nonsense. Browsing should not be a series of interruptions to pull out random tools to test urls for safety.
There is no 140 character limit on a web page so there is no excuse to use it on a web page. So that reason does not fly there.
If someone wants to be sure that their posted link does not get clicked on by me, just use one of the shortening services. I won't be clicking.
Errr, surely, the key is not disconnection of the server (just pull out the power plug), it's about removal of the service, where many links are embedded in blogs and e-mails.
There is no 140 character limit on a web page so there is no excuse to use it on a web page. So that reason does not fly there.
There is with SMS.
If someone wants to be sure that their posted link does not get clicked on by me, just use one of the shortening services. I won't be clicking.
That's going to be about 98% of the links posted. For one, Twitter will automagically shorten a URI via bit.ly if it is over 30 characters and it contains hyphens, underscores, etc in positions 31+. There is a method to bypass the shortening routine but few have gotten IT.
The links that many avoid are the one's that lead to framed content. Shorteners such as Digg, StumbleUpon, HootSuite are all frowned upon by at least those within my network of peers. We don't appreciate the frame jacking methods.
With today's trend toward 10-15-20 word hyphenated URIs, most don't have a choice. I know most of the Bloggers don't. I want to have a one to one talk with the original developer of the Title Slug plugin. < They broke the web. ;)
Errr, surely, the key is not disconnection of the server (just pull out the power plug), it's about removal of the service, where many links are embedded in blogs and e-mails.
