Optimism over tr.im links
An industry expert has moved to calm fears that the demise of a popular URL shortener will result in millions of broken links, which could have major implications for linkbuilders.
This week, The Nambu Network announced that its tr.im application would shut down and warned that existing links will continue to redirect only till December 31st 2009, although tweets on social media portal Twitter will not be affected.
The company pinpointed an inability to monetise URL shortening and the dominance of rival bit.ly on Twitter as reasons for the closure.
Quality inbound links are thought to be a major factor in search engine rankings from leading portals such as Google and Bing.
Consequently, the revelation that millions of links could simply cease to redirect from 2010 onwards has led to consternation among SEO marketers.
Buyer for tr.im needed
An external investor could purchase the application and safeguard the links but The Nambu Network stated that all efforts to find a buyer so far have failed.
In the wake of the announcement, however, it was reported last night on Mashable that bit.ly’s investor Betaworks has contacted tr.im’s founder and “offered to host his URL mappings starting tomorrow”.
Some doubt remains about whether tr.im's development team will accept an offer from its long-time rival.
But technology journalist Ben Parr has expressed his belief that the links will ultimately be saved.
“Our bet is that someone reputable buys tr.im before December 31st,” he said. “There is just too much value in those links for there to be no bidders.”
The number of URL shortening services has proliferated in recent years.
In addition to tr.im and bit.ly, TinyURL, is.gd and tinyarro.ws all enable users to abbreviate lengthy web addresses.
These shortened URLs are easier to share with friends because Twitter has a size limit of 140 characters and single SMS texts cannot exceed 160 characters.
