Failing to find a larger company to acquire it, Nambu Network will shut down its link shortening service. Tr.im has thousands of users and creates tens of thousands of URLs per day for social media users.
Like tinyurl, bit.ly and many other free services, tr.im converts a conventional URL to a shorter URL that redirects users to the original page. Link shortening services have been especially popular on Twitter. With a 140-character limit, URL shorteners make it more practical for members to share Web content with each other on the micro-blogging service.
“We regret that it came to this, but all of our efforts to avoid it failed,” Nambu Network said on its home page. “No business we approached wanted to purchase tr.im for even a minor amount.”
Nambu Blames Twitter
Nambu said all tr.im links will continue to redirect until at least the end of 2009. If no company steps up to buy tr.im, those links could eventually lead users to nowhere.
“There is no way for us to monetize URL shortening — users won’t pay for it — and we just can’t justify further development since Twitter has all but anointed bit.ly the market winner,” the company wrote. “There is simply no point for us to continue operating tr.im, and pay for its upkeep.”
The company was especially critical of Twitter and companies that feed off of it to provide services. Nambu claims tr.im gets hit by countless bots every day farming its data to create and operate companies that allow users to search and retweet the hottest stories on Twitter, such as Tweetmeme.
“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 long-run no…