Posted 10/05/09 at 08:00:51 PM by Ryan Whitwam

URL shortening service Cligs has announced that it will be closing up shop later this month. The service will stop accepting new URLs on Sunday, 25 Oct 2009 at 12:00:00 GMT. The owner of Cligs indicated that there would be a tool available at some point for users to export their data.
 
Cligs reported there were a number of reasons for the move. Of the chief reason the site says, “There comes a point when you need to actually hear the message the market is telling you, and not just listen and ignore it.” The owner of Cligs noted that since it was not winning the market, devoting additional time and money to it made less sense.  This tends to remind one of the recent almost-closure of Tr.im a few weeks back. In a follow up post, the Cligs owner said he would be open to selling the service.

This is all partially your fault.  You use Bit.ly, don’t you?

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Posted 08/13/09 at 02:04:21 PM by Paul Lilly

URL shortening services are all well and good, but what happens when one of them goes down? If that happens, you're looking at a lot of dead links, whether they appear in forum posts or magazine articles. That appeared to be the case with tr.im, who recently went offline but is back up and running.

"We have restored tr.im and re-opened its website," tr.im wrote in a blog. "We have been absolutely overwhelmed by the popular response, and the countless public and private appeals I have received to keep tr.im alive."

The blog post went on to complain that bit.ly "has a monopoly position" in the URL shortening business that it cannot compete with, not unless "Twitter offers choice." Nevertheless, tr.im vowed to keep operating indefinitely while the service considers its financial options for the future.

Full blog post here - http://tr.im/wlgC

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