Tr.im Missed Their Biggest Opportunity to Monetize

I was disappointed to learn this morning that Tr.im — the URL shortener of choice for many of us here at Tippingpoint Labs — had shut down their service.

As URL shorteners move through their life cycles, we’re destined to see more consolidation in the market. The biggest issue facing the URL shortener platform as a whole is that they’ve failed to identify the most obvious monetization opportunity available today — detailed measurement statistics and metrics.

Tr.im showed the most promise

Tr.im called it quits in the middle of the gestation phase for one single reason: failure to monetize. I would have paid $10 a month for their stats (far more valuable than Viralheat) and they could have monetized overnight.

Early on, I picked Tr.im as the most promising URL shortener. They maintain the expectation with the user that if I click a Tr.im link, I’ll go directly to the URL on the other side of Tr.im. Digg just made the mistake of putting themselves in the middle of the click-through to the article. This additional step defeats the purpose of this kind of service: get me to where I’m going as efficiently as possible.

What’s more — much more! — is that Tr.im had metrics, giving us the ability to see how far, frequently and from where our Tr.im URL’s were clicked. Our team — and marketers around the world — could access that aggregated information collected through the unique URL’s provided by the service. In a day and age when measuring your ROI for a given campaign is crucial to your marketing success, this kind of data is invaluable.

URL shorteners hit gestation without a monetization concept

As URL shorterners, as a platform, move into the Escalation Phase, they’re counting on traditional revenue streams to provide them with a monetization model that will prove to be profitable. News flash: advertising and branding opportunities won’t pay the bills.

Coca-Cola debuted their URL shortener in the hopes that loyal Coke fans around the world will spread the Coke brand even further. This is really idiotic. As soon as a brand name is introduced into the process you expect interference. TinyURL.com, who was early to the game, dominates the market, and what users want is a reliable, trusted, third-party URL shortener that will deliver measurable results.

My money’s on whoever charges for data

So, who’s going to emerge as the dominant player in the URL shortener game? Whoever’s smart enough to monetize access to the wealth of data underlying the tinyURL trend.

Tr.im, turn your service back on. Charge me ten bucks a month to access the stats, and monetize your biggest asset: your data.

About the author

Andrew Davis -

In 2002, Andrew founded Tippingpoint Labs with journalist James Cosco. Since then, he's spent countless hours exploring the online universe and building a methodological approach to developing digital strategies that drive revenue or reduce costs.

Andrew's always asking big questions and analyzing data to understand markets, online forces and even business models. Andrew's research has resulted in the creation of innovative online metrics including Online Brand Value and Category Brand Value, eye-opening graphical representations of website evolution through the New Media Life Cycle and even using online data to predict offline revenue.

When he's not surfing the web, Andrew's traveling the globe speaking to a wide-variety of audiences about everything from social media to the future of print. Andrew is a frequent contributor to the Tippingpoint Labs website and has been creating valuable content since the early 1990s for The Jim Henson Company, CNN, The Today Show and MTV.

He's contributed to a book of short stories, called The Way Things Were and produced and co-wrote Roadside Ambition a documentary film about one small town with two huge balls.

"In a world where content is consumed as rapidly as it's created, companies need to develop a sound strategy to creating valuable online experiences that can, and should, be leveraged enterprise-wide. There is a content solution to every business challenge."