tr.im URL shortner rises from the dead
It seems that the reports of tr.im’s death had been greatly exaggerated.
The other day we reported that URL shortener tr.im was closing its doors, and we also wondered what this would mean for all the links it had shortned as well as what it meant for other URL shorteners in general. All of that seems forgotten now as tr.im has announced that it has reopened its doors with no further plans to close.
Excuse me if we find this whole series of events a bit fishy.
Nambu, the parent company of tr.im assures its users in the blog post saying the service was back, “This was not a public-relations stunt. At all.” Well, if it smells like a publicity stunt, and it looks like a publicity stunt, than, guess what, it is probably a publicity stunt.
TechCrunch is reporting that Nambu was looking to sell tr.im for between $80,000 – $100,000, but it appears it may be hard to sell a URL shortening service if it is not currently up and running. And to make this sound even more like the whole thing was for publicity, and continues to be so, there was this comment also on the resurrection post:
Nambu will keep tr.im operating going forward, indefinitely, while we continue to consider our options in regards to tr.im’s future.
This sounds very much like code for, “We’re still for sale, and look, we’re working again!”
Call me cynical if you must, but this really does feel like it was a way to gain a tremendous about publicity and backlinks to the service. That doesn’t change the fact that it does raise some valid questions about what happens when a URL shortener shuts down, but for now that isn’t something we have to concern ourselves with thankfully.
As for tr.im … well played.
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August 11th, 2009
I never heard of tr.im until now. Tiny URL was the only one I heard of….