Tr.im is a URL shortener, your next question will be “what’s a URL shortener?” Well on the internet you have a normal domain name such as thiswillbealongdomain.com or some other name ending with .com or the hundreds of other extentions at the end of a domain name. What shortners do is allow you to send a small link such as tr.im/ab1 which would redirect you to the site, the major reason shornters came into existence because of micro-blogging sites such as twitter where you need to send your message in 140 characters and the smaller the size of your links the better for usage of that 140 characters.
Well Tr.im sent out a post tonight saying “tr.im R.I.P.” they are closing the doors of tr.im because as they stated:
Twitter has all but sapped us of any last energy to double-down and develop tr.im further. What is the point? With bit.ly the Twitter default, and with us having no inside connection to Twitter, tr.im will lose over the the long-run no matter how good it may or may not be at this moment, or in the future.
When I saw that statement I was pissed, not that I used tr.im but the fact that they geared the whole kit and kaboodle on twitter alone, and now that they can’t get twitter to buy the work that they have put in, they scream “well it’s because of twitter” come on get off your high horse tr.im. If you guys or gals had put together a better plan, and worked on making tr.im better and not be so dependent on twitter you may have been able to create a better business model, but instead you put all your eggs in one basket. I always thought rule number #1 was “Don’t put all your eggs in one basket”.
Don’t get angry at twitter, get angry at yourselves for not understanding the dynamics of the web and how to create revenue. Not only do we have to hear you bitch and moan about how twitter is doing you so bad, now we have to look forward to all the tr.im links that will no longer direct people to content.
It’s not a sad day in my opinion it’s just another day, of another company, that looked for the money and really didn’t give two cents about the community. Do us a favor release tr.im as an open source project so it can live on, and go about creating another business model that sucks some where else.
TBTR
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Back in the day, marketers used a term called “positioning” to differentiate their product from the next. In the case of trim, better positioning even with a so-so business model could have bought them breathing space. Their failure as you have well pointed out was at their own hands. Not the hands of Twitter.
Great post.
Just read the blurb on tr.im’s website about closing shop – pretty lame. It gave me the impression that they are blaming others for their situation. I would bet that their only plan was to hope that Twitter would make them successful.
I wonder what the asking price is?
Great blog on explaining the reasoning behind tr.im closing their doors Sounds like they just decided to throw in the towel and not try to be competitive. What a shame!