It’s not the best time to be a URL-shortening service right now. Tr.im has been dead-pooled and others are being used once again to help spread spam and malware across Twitter. But one major concern that’s been brought up with Tr.im closing its doors is the possibility that the URLs shortened with its service will no longer be available by next year.

That’s a lot of lost data, and it’s a concern that we as web users have when dealing with startups. We ask, how long will this service be around, and what will happen to my data if this company doesn’t succeed in the long run? Granted, these are questions we haven’t had to ask as readily as during the first dotcom bubble bust, but this does feel like deja vous. With the current developments around real time search, however, I’m beginning to wonder how URL-shortening services and their ongoing issues will affect/be affected by real time search trends.
Read the rest of this entry »