The rise of Twitter as a social-media powerhouse and its micro-blogging platform has created a renewed urgency for URL-shortening services.

There are now endless numbers of websites vying to shorten your too-long tweets to conform to the 140-character limit, but as in every competitive industry not everyone can survive and thrive. This week one of the players, Canadian-based Tr.im (owned by Nambu Network), announced it was throwing in the towel.

Now a small business closing up shop is not normally newsworthy, except when they cry foul as the ship is sinking. While on the one hand Nambu president Eric Woodward told Computerworld's Gregg Keiser that Tr.im was "accepting the realities and moving on," he also seized the opportunity to take a shot at Twitter for making Bit.ly its default URL shortening service.

"They're the default, and even if we're better, it won't matter, so what's the point?" said Woodward. "As soon as Bit.ly was made the default, the game was over."

Tr.im initially announced its demise through a blog post last Sunday, but 48 hours later did an about face to say it had been resurrected and will keep on trimming those URLs "indefinitely, while we continue to consider our options in regards to Tr.im's future." (see Tr.im blog post)

Tr.im further stoked the Bit.ly-Twitter relationship debate, by adding that "Bit.ly has a monopoly position that cannot be challenged with reasonable investment or innovation unless Twitter offers choice. This is a basic reality of challenging monopolies. Bit.ly has deep personal connections and agreements with Twitter that we simply cannot compete with. And it is our humble opinion that this type of favoritism will become an issue for all Twitter developers."

If having Bit.ly as Twitter's go-to link shortener is unfair, you would think industry-leader TinyURL would join in the debate. After all it was Tiny's Twitter perch that Bit.ly usurped back in May. While Bit.ly has quickly become tops on Twitter, overall TinyURL still controls more than 70 percent of the market (see Tweetmeme report from March 2009). TinyURL founder Kevin Gilbertson appears unfazed by Tr.im's attempts to kick up a dust storm around this issue and certainly has no plans to cease operating now that Tiny is no longer Twitter's best man.

"With Twitter becoming big it does give the company that they partner with an advantage, but there's still room in the market for other players," Gilbertson told Reuters, adding that before they were replaced by Bit.ly, TinyURL's Twitter traffic amounted to just 10 percent of their overall total. "There's lots of uses for URL shortening other than just Twitter."

Gilbertson, who launched TinyURL in 2002 long before the rise of social media, said most of his traffic still emanates from people needing to shorten links in emails. He pointed out that unlike TinyURL, Tr.im's business model seemed to be largely dependent on Twitter, which became untenable when Bit.ly became the default.

"From that perspective they can no longer pursue what they thought they were trying to do, so they're now switching their direction," said Gilbertson, who admitted his Twitter traffic has plateaued since May. Overall TinyURL's average daily pageviews are down more than 4 percent over the last 3 months, according to Alexa Traffic Stats. This is prompting Gilbertson to reach out to other potential partners. "From a business perspective you want to try to get as many partnerships as you can to maintain the market share. Of course we'd like to arrange deals with people to be able to have them use us as the default."

Gilbertson also cautioned that if you're going to have an exclusive partnership arrangement, like Bit.ly now has with Twitter, it's best not to get too enamored with it so that it becomes too big a slice of your traffic. "The problem with having a deal with Twitter where you are the default and you're heavily depending on them, is what happens when they do switch?"

Technology market research firm Gartner Inc has published the 2009 "Hype Cycle for Emerging Technologies," its effort to chart out what's hot or not at the cutting edge of hi-tech jargon. It's just one of an annual phalanx of reports that handicap some 1,650 technologies or trends in 79 different categories for how likely the terms are to make it into mainstream corporate parlance.

Jackie Fenn, the report's lead analyst and author of the 2008 book "Mastering the Hype Cycle," delivers the main verdict:

Technologies at the Peak of Inflated Expectations during 2009 include cloud computing, e-books (such as from Amazon and Sony) and internet TV (for example, Hulu), while social software and microblogging sites (such as Twitter) have tipped over the peak and will soon experience disillusionment among corporate users.

Click to enlarge

What's most interesting in the report, now in its 14th year, is what the corporate research firm says is a long way off from the mainstream.

It will take up to five years for many of today's trendy technologies to become mainstream, including Web 2.0, cloud computing, Internet TV, virtual worlds, and a true corporate mouthful, service-oriented architecture (SOA).

Funny how long hype cycles take to pay out. Three years ago, in its 2006 Hype Cycle Report, Gartner predicted Web 2.0 would go mainstream within just two years.

More than five years out, which means nearly dead in terms of industry attention, are technologies such as the once hot radio-frequency ID (RFID) concept, along with mobile robots and human augmentation and some absurdly high concepts like context-delivery architectures.

The second chart, on the right, describes Gartner's methodology. It's all very imprecise, but a game worth playing.

Images: Gartner (August 2009)

Emerging Technology Hype Cycle archives
1995 1996 1997 1998 1999 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009

It’s not everyday one hears a company say its business didn’t stand a chance.

But that was basically the gist of the announcement by Vancouver-based Nambu Networks when it said that it would pull the plug on tr.im, its 12-month-old URL shortening service.

“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,” read the surprisingly blunt notice posted on the tr.im Web site over the weekend.

URL shorteners compress lengthy Web site addresses into pithy links that are better suited for sharing on social media services like Twitter, in which a person’s messages are limited to 140 characters.

Bit.ly, backed by a number of venture capital investors, is the default shortener on Twitter — Web links pasted into Twitter posts are automatically shortened with bit.ly.

So bleak is the outlook in the URL shortening game, according to Nambu, that it couldn’t find anyone to take the business off it hands for even a “token” amount.

“We quietly contacted a number of people within the Twitter development world, and nobody wanted it in exchange a token amount of money. No one perceived any value in it, or they wanted to operate a shortener under a differently branded domain name,” said a blog post explaining the news on the Nambu site.

In an interview, Nambu’s Eric Woodward would not delve into the specific amount of money the post was referring to, but he acknowledged that “token” is a subjective term that some people may define differently than he does.

But regardless of the amount, the problem for any potential buyer is the same, he said: “If they pick it up they’re just going to have to compete with bit.ly.”

Meanwhile, the demise of tr.im is causing worries about the fate of the millions of tr.im-ed links scattered across the Internet, creating trouble for the Web sites that depend on those links for their own traffic. Nambu said the firm will continue to support the shortened links through December 31.

After that though, the links could simply stop working.

Social media blog Mashable:

“Tr.im’s shutdown is going to result in a mess unless it’s bought. Its death reopens a very real and very important debate on the future of URL shorteners and the entire link-sharing ecosystem that Twitter has built.”

The new world is not so different from the old world – it just moves faster and in different ways.

As early as the 12th century, the image of dwarfs standing on the shoulders of giants came into discourse to mean that all knowledge advances based on the discoveries of the past.

In academia and in journalism that notion has been coupled with the doctrine of attribution – you need to acknowledge the shoulders you’re standing on, to give due credit but also to allow others to search out that perch and see if their view from it is any different.

To me, the current debate about the “Link Economy” in content terms is about:

Are you part of the conversation?
Are you adding to the debate or just playing postman and passing others’ views on?
Are you adding value and …
Are you getting rewarded for adding the value you do?

As head of a journalistic army of 2,700 professionals I obviously have an intense vested interest in ensuring that their work is valuable to readers and valued by them.

Part of that involves ensuring that they are in the centre of the action and that they fill their reports with their expertise and experience. Part of that involves ensuring that they are part of the debate, that their reports inform the debate and that the debate, in turn, informs their future reporting.

Our standards on sourcing have always emphasized the importance of giving proper credit, even when quoting from competitors. And, of course, we expect the same in return.

In the writing we do specifically for the web we’re as open to outbound linking as we are to the inbound (see Felix Salmon for some good examples). Much of our other writing doesn’t currently use outbound links because of the particular ecosystem of our professional products, for which a lot of it is specifically written. But that, I am sure, will change over time.

The real danger in not being extremely open to linking, it seems to me, is that by moving yourself out of the mainstream debate you risk irrelevancy.

There will be other shoulders to stand on.

Those shoulders will be the ones that provide the lift.

Those shoulders will be the ones that will help advance knowledge and debate.

The fact that today the crediting can be done with a hyperlink is to me intellectually no different than the use of an academic footnote or a traditional journalistic “…according to XYZ in an interview”. It’s just better, because it’s fast, direct and creates an instant chain of knowledge.

What’s more interesting to me is what one does with the link, not the link itself.

I have a passing interest in the link or retweet that simply passes a nugget along.

I have a bit more interest when the linker or retweeter extracts real gold that was hidden in the original and gives it more prominence.

I have a lot more interest when the link or retweet uses the original as a jumping off point for argument, debate, or development.

That’s when it gets interesting.

And that’s when we, too, stand on that tower of giant shoulders people started visualising in the 12th century.

If you were miffed at not being able to tweet your innermost thoughts and random musings to your followers yesterday, or post that smartypants comment on a friend’s Facebook status update, blame politics. Turns out the reason why Twitter was knocked down for hours, while Facebook users had trouble logging in and posting to their profiles on Thursday was a Georgian blogger who uses both services.

According to CNET, which cites Facebook’s chief security officer Max Kelly, the blogger also has accounts in LiveJournal and Google’s Blogger and YouTube platforms, and goes by the name of Cyxymu, which is the name of a town in Georgia. Kelly told CNET:

“It was a simultaneous attack across a number of properties targeting him to keep his voice from being heard.”

Now, for those who don’t follow international politics closely, here’s why the pro-Georgian blogger may have been targeted. August 8 marks the first anniversary of the war that broke out between Russia and Georgia over South Ossetia. Russia sent troops into the separatist region last year, which Georgia claims forced it to launch a counter-offensive. Some other folks say the war started on August 7, 2008. So it was probably no coincidence that the Web attack on Cyxymu, the blogger who blames the attack on Russia, took place on the eve of the war’s anniversary.

Whatever the date, one thing is clear: the more Twitter becomes a communication tool in zones of conflict, the likelier it is to become a target for hackers with political motives. The micro-blogging service obviously needs to step up security so that hack attacks don’t shut it down. After all, regular folks like MC Hammer still need to get to the airport.

Keep an eye on:

• Platinum Equity turns up as the third bidder for The Boston Globe. (The Boston Globe)
• TV dealmaking season wraps up; prices, volume down. (Reuters)
• News Corp’s Fox has asked distributors to withhold DVDs from Redbox. (Bloomberg)

Photo: Georgian national flags/Reuters

MySpace.com dodged a bullet on Thursday, but in the process the social networking site may have gotten a stinging slap in the face instead.

Hackers trained their fire on social media highflyers Twitter and Facebook Thursday morning, knocking the former entirely offline for a few hours and slowing things down on the latter site.

LiveJournal, a blogging site, was also a victim of the so-called denial of service attacks.

At MySpace, once the Internet’s top social networking destination, life went on as usual.

Perhaps the malefactors didn’t deem MySpace a target worthy of attention. MySpace’s popularity has waned at a time when Facebook and Twitter have experienced massive user growth.

In June, MySpace announced plans to cut 30 percent of its U.S. workforce and to close at least four international offices.

Or perhaps the site, owned by News Corp, was more adept at fending off Thursday’s cyberattacks.

MediaFile wanted to ask MySpace what the story was, and see if it felt snubbed in the event that hackers had overlooked it, but the company would not make a spokesperson available for comment.

(Reporting and Writing by Laura Isensee)

    Still not sure about Twitter?
   More than half of Fortune 100 companies are using the wildly popular micro-blogging site, according to a new study, adding to growing buzz in the business world that Twitter hopes to convert into revenue this year.
   

Twitter trumped other social media as the online tool of choice for the Fortune 100 firms, according to the study by public relations firm Burson-Marsteller and its digital media unit Proof.
   

Some 54 percent of them regularly send out “tweets” or messages of 140 characters or less. The companies primarily use Twitter to blast news; for customer service; to announce promotions; or for employee recruitment. 
  

 Blogs hold the No. 2 spot, with 32 percent of the companies regularly posting to a branded blog.
    Social networking site Facebook came in third. Twenty-nine percent of Fortune 100 companies have active, consumer-focused fan pages on Facebook.

Movie star homes are big in LA.

In the San Francisco Bay Area though, the celebrity real estate scene is all about Internet bigwigs.

So it wasn’t a total shock when various tech blogs picked up the fact that Twitter co-founder Biz Stone has put his 2-bedroom Berkeley hills cottage up for sale.

Stone actually announced the sale himself in a Tweet stating that it was “time to move,” despite his affection for the pad, and a link for prospective buyers to view the official listing.

The mid-century, modern-style cottage, designed by architect William Wurster, is “peaceful and stylistic,” reads the listing, not to mention decidedly more modest than the sprawling estates favored by some Bay Area tech barons.

It’s also much more affordable: Stone is asking $575,000 (a check on Zillow.com states that the 800-square foot property was last sold in January 2006 for $550,000).

If Stone didn’t realize a massive return in the real estate game, he’s more than made up for it in the business world, with Twitter having reportedly garnered more than $55 million in funding and adding new users to the microblogging service at a phenomenal rate.

Perhaps the next occupant of Stone’s abode will strike similar gold.

Here are some of the day’s stories on the media industry:

Movie studios try to harness “Twitter effect” (Reuters)
“Audiences are voicing snap judgments on movies faster and to more people than ever before on Twitter, and their ability to create a box office hit or a flop is forcing major studios to revamp marketing campaigns. The stakes are especially high this summer season when big budget movies like “Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince,” which opened on Wednesday, play to a core audience of young, plugged-in moviegoers,” writes Alex Dobuzinskis.

Sun-Times chief optimistic about sale of company (Chicago Tribune)
But, Michael Oneal writes: “In a court filing last week, creditors in the Sun-Times’ bankruptcy case raised concerns about the sale efforts, noting that the company has “limited time” before it “can no longer sustain the losses being incurred from operations.” They warned that unless a buyer is found soon, “time could run out, or a buyer could be located that would only pay a fire-sale price.”

Goldman makes peace with blogger in trademark case (Reuters)
“The agreement required blogger Michael Morgan to post a disclaimer on his goldmansachs666.com website, saying it has no affiliation with the financial firm. Morgan, a Florida investment adviser, uses his blog — whose name combines Goldman’s name with numbers used to evoke connotations with the devil — to criticize the bank and its large profits,” writes Martha Graybow.

Reuters Opens its Kimono (CJR)
“Wright, Reuters’s global editor of ethics, innovation, and news standards, brandished the thick stack of paper to drive home the point that “we’ve moved beyond the time when people were carrying around books with style guides.” We’re also apparently beyond the time when all journalism organizations charge people for said style books,” writes Craig Silverman

$140,000,000 = Projected 2010 revenue in U.S. dollars according to Twitter February 2009 financial forecast leaked to TechCrunch. (*2)

100 million = Projected number of Twitter users in fourth quarter 2010 according to leaked spreadsheet. (*2)

75 million = Twitter members in May 2009 based on rough calculation of worldwide users, extrapolated from comScore and All Things D data (*3, *4)

$45,000,000 = Cash on hand in February 2009 raised from venture capital investors, less costs of operating the company. (*1, 2)

37,323,0000 = active Twitter users worldwide during month of May, 2009 - ComScore market research (*3)

$4,400,000 = Projected 2009 year revenue according to leaked spreadsheet. Q4 2009 revenue expected to reach $4 million. (*2)

3-4 million = Harvard Business Review study finds that 10 percent of Twitter users account for more than 90 percent of tweets (*5)

$2,100,000 = Estimated costs of running Twitter with 60 employees in Q3, 2009 according to February 2009 internal financial projection. (*2)

1 million = "There's a million ways, if you are disseminating real-time info...(Twitter) could be commercially viable" - Twitter CEO (*6)

$400,000 = Twitter's projected 2009 Q3 revenue in U.S. dollars, according to leaked spreadsheet. (*1, *2)

$1 = Cost of each user to Twitter (TechCrunch). (*1)

$0 = Twitter's internal revenue projection for first half of 2009, according to internal forecast leaked to TechCrunch. (*2)

Footnotes:

*1 TechCrunch article based on leaked Twitter corporate documents it says were sent to it this week by a hacker. The blog's publisher, Michael Arrington, notes that membership figures and other assumptions are already out of date:

Twitter has told us that this was never an official document and it certainly is no longer accurate. But it gives an interesting glimpse into the company’s financial targets nonetheless.

Twitter confirmed some corporate documents were lost after an administrative employee's account was hacked. It has not confirmed any leaked details.

*2 Screenshot of Twitter February 2009 internal Financial Forecast spreadsheet document leaked to TechCrunch.

*3 37.3 mln users worldwide - ComScore data May 2009. This includes 16 million U.s. users. Using different measurement methods, Compete.com estimated that Twitter had 23 million U.S. users in June.

*4 A poll for the All Things D conference in May found 51 percent of U.S. Twitter users sign on less than once a month. Since comScore data only counts visitors older than 15 years old on a monthly basis, one can extrapolate that the 37.3 figure represents only the 49 percent of active users. The 75 million estimate combines active and inactive members who have signed up for an account but rarely or never visit Twitter. The poll surveyed 1,005 members of the U.S. general public and was conducted by by Penn, Schoen & Berland Associates.

*5 Harvard Business Review May 2009 study of 300,000 Twitter users:

At the same time there is a small contingent of users who are very active. Specifically, the top 10% of prolific Twitter users accounted for over 90% of tweets. On a typical online social network, the top 10% of users account for 30% of all production ... The pattern of contributions on Twitter is more concentrated among the few top users than is the case on Wikipedia, even though Wikipedia is clearly not a communications tool. This implies that Twitter's resembles more of a one-way, one-to-many publishing service more than a two-way, peer-to-peer communication network.

*6 Twitter Co-founders Evan Williams and Biz Stone interviewed at All Things D conference, May 2009.

Reuters story on document leak
Reuters commentary: Twitter should sell if it can