Whenever you use any online service, especially one without a proven business model, you should always ask yourself “is the benefit of using this greater than the cost of it vanishing in a year’s time?”
Can we get an export of our DATA, eg. which tr.im urls goto what fullsize URLS?
So that I can rewrite the thousands of links in my blog which point to tr.im soon to be nowhere.
— A comment on the blog post announcing the closure of tr.im
I’m pretty sure this isn't the last URL-shortening service to be closing its doors over the next year or so.
Luser Attitude Readjustment Tool?
Of course I read this as "the cost of varnishing it in a year's time". My brain: witty & clever, or dumb as all hell? You be the judge.
At least in the case of an URL-shortening service, you could in theory self-export: simply have a spider follow every 'tr.im' link and note where it goes.
Pretty easy to imagine services that aren't like that, however. Even easy to imagine people basing businesses on them.
(WTF is the business model of an url shortener, anyway?)