URL shortening service Trim is reopening its doors, restoring service to both existing Trim links and the core of the site that lets users make new ones. A company blog post that details the change of plans says that the company will continue to run Trim "indefinitely" while a trustworthy buyer is sought out.
Trim originally began experiencing problems late last week as all of its shortened links stopped working for several hours. Then, over the weekend, the company announced that it would be shutting down come the end of December, taking all of its shortened links with it.
In Tuesday's announcement, the company reiterated that the move to shut down, then re-open was not a publicity stunt, nor will it ever change how the service handles URLs such as adding a framebar or interstitial advertising that forces users to wait, or click through an ad to get to the source link. Such options could bring in revenue, but the company says that would go against the very principals Trim was founded on.
The post also warns other link shortening services that the odds continue to be "stacked" against them with Twitter using competitor Bitly as the built-in link shortener. "This is a basic reality of challenging monopolies," it says. "This type of favoritism will become an issue for all Twitter developers."
While Trim had a heavy following, users may not be willing to come back to it without knowing when or if another company will buy it. It's also unclear how long parent company Nambu Network would be able to continue operating without a buyer, despite the offer to keep running it at a loss.
Here's a must-have Firefox add-on. Called Multi Links, this extension lets you simply right click and drag your mouse across the screen to select multiple links at once. It's just like selecting multiple files on your computer, and highly effective for tearing through a page of links you want to look at or save for later.
By default, selected links open up in new browser tabs, although you can go into the options to choose whether you want them to open up in new windows, or be bookmarked instead. You're also able to change the color scheme of the box, and the outlines of the selected links--just in case you're into that sort of thing.
Want to open up multiple URLs? Just drag your mouse over them with this handy extension.
(Credit: CNET)Advanced users can utilize keyboard shortcuts to limit mouse work. For instance, holding down the control or shift button while creating a box means you can hop around a page of results--selecting the items you want to open or save, while skipping over others. The extension is also coded to ignore extra links on search pages, which keeps you from unintentionally opening up the cached and similar links on each result. This worked fine on Google and Bing, but not on Yahoo or Ask.
This extension is definitely worth keeping around because it does not interfere with normal, right-click behavior. My one hope is that future versions will forgo the options menu in place of a small pop-up, or slide-out menu that asks what you want to do with links after selecting them.
See also: Snap Links (which does the same thing, but has not been updated since February) and Selection Links.
After two days of silence, Digg has gone on the record to officially acknowledge the change in how its shortened links are redirected, as well as clear up how links will be handled in the future.
The change, which took place on Sunday, had links which once lead directly to a story's source, redirecting to Digg's story pages instead. The new behavior appeared only on stories that had been submitted to the site, leading to confusion on where users would go when they clicked on a shortened Digg URL.
In a post on Digg's company blog, CEO Jay Adelson explained that the new way of handling shortened URLs would remain in place. As a concession to early adopters, Digg URLs created before Tuesday would continue to link directly to the source. But going forward, all new links will retain the newer behavior of redirecting to Digg story pages, unless the page had never been submitted as a story, or the viewer is registered and logged in to Digg.com.
Despite how the the DiggBar and integrated shortening service were introduced to users earlier this year, Adelson said Digg never wanted to end up as a URL service provider.
"Our strategy with Digg short URLs is to facilitate sharing of Digg content, not to be a conventional redirection service," Adelson said. Digg founder Kevin Rose had said something along the same lines in a Sunday night appearance on Leo Laporte's This Week in Tech.
So far, the change has resulted in a lot of user distrust. Many people who used the service to shorten URLs have vowed never to use it again, while others simply chided the company for changing the behavior of links without first alerting users. Digg has caved to unhappy users in the past, but this change has more to do with Digg's business model than previous feature changes.
The DiggBar remains one of the company's most controversial features. While fervent users continue to use the service, it was initially a big turnoff for many publishers and casual users. Along with the structure of user comments, the DiggBar has endured a lot of changes since its inception, having had much of its functionality made optional after users and critics alike bashed its operating methods.
Still, the change in URL behavior serves several important purposes in moving Digg forward as a business. One is to get more page views and boost unique user counts from people who must first visit Digg's story pages before visiting the source story. Another is to grow user adoption of the DiggBar, since using it preserves the old way of clicking on links and going directly to the source.
Whether Digg will continue to change its functionality in order to push users toward enabling the DiggBar remains to be seen.
Over the weekend, social news site Digg changed how its links work in a way that gives the site an increase in the number of users who visit.
Users of the site's URL-shortening service noticed that if the Web address they had shortened had been submitted to Digg, the shortened URL would then take its visitors to the story's page on Digg instead of the page it linked to. At least it was this way for users who were not logged into Digg; registered users who had turned off the DiggBar (and who had a recent log-in cookie from Digg) would not see the change in behavior.
The problem
This may seem like a small change, but it's a big knock on Digg's shortening service, and for Digg's credibility at maintaining features.
Introduced in early April, the DiggBar was originally intended as a service that did three things: one was to shorten links and act as a redirection tool. The second was to bring Digg features along for the ride with a framed bar that would appear on the top of the page and provide a simple way to view user comments, related stories, as well as other Dugg items from that same site. The third was to provide a simpler way for users to publish content, either to Digg itself, or places like Facebook, Twitter, and e-mail. This included giving users the capability to shorten a URL by dropping a Digg.com/ in front of the site's address.
Despite the bevvy of features compared to some competing URL-shortening services, both users and publishers alike found fault in the DiggBar. Users had problems with the service since it drastically hid information about the site they were on, including the URL in their browser's address bar, and any bookmarks they saved, which would retain the DiggBar. For publishers, there was the worry that users would choose to comment back on Digg instead of on their own pages, as well as SEO damage from search engines not properly indexing and attributing traffic since Digg.com was the redirector.
Digg's solution, which came just two weeks after the DiggBar launch, was to make the whole DiggBar experience something users had to opt-in to see. This meant that registered users of the site would only see shortened Digg URLs, and the DiggBar by choice. Stray visitors of Digg wouldn't see either.
A feature that was once quite controversial, the DiggBar is now a rarity, unless users are registered with Digg and have opted-in to see it on Digg story links.
(Credit: CNET)In effect this left the DiggBar as something power users could take advantage of, but that casual users would never see--reducing the entire DiggBar feature down to URL shortening.
This clearly wasn't good enough for Digg, since this move nets the site more ad impressions and unique user tracks than it would by acting as a redirection service alone. Back when it was originally introduced, the company was able to get by since the DiggBar displayed ads when people were using certain features such as viewing related content, Digg user comments, and other stories from that site's particular source. But, without the DiggBar on top, and without any kind of recognition--other than in name, Digg was getting none of these benefits.
So is Digg's shortening service now just a way to shorten links to Digg.com pages? Digg founder Kevin Rose went on to say as much in a Sunday night appearance on Leo Laporte's This Week in Tech, citing that the company was having to internally juggle certain shortened-URLs that had become popular from outside sources. Particularly, ones from Twitter where the source site would be on the receiving end of an increasing amount of traffic, but because of the lack of a Digg frame bar on the top of the page, it wasn't easy for users to... Read more
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