It looks like URL-shortener tr.im, which shut down earlier this week, has come back from the dead -- at least temporarily.
Parent company Nambu Network says "the countless public and private appeals" convinced it to revive the service. But people who used tr.im to create shorter, less clunky web links (there were "thousands and thousands" of you, according to Nambu), as well as those who saw tr.im's shutdown as a sign of the vulnerability of social web services, probably shouldn't get their hopes up. While the company says it plans to keep Tr.im running "indefinitely," it also says the factors that prompted the shutdown haven't changed:
We stand by everything that we have written on this blog and communicated to the many people that have reached out to us ... We too want to see tr.im live on, but feel we can only transition it to another party committed to ensuring the links are not highjacked in any way. A contract for sale to an unknown group or individual simply cannot guarantee that.
In other words, Nambu still says it can't compete with URL shortener bit.ly as long as the latter is favored by microblogging service Twitter. The company is pretty open about the fact that it's still looking to sell the service, but given Nambu's pessimism about the competition, as well as its unwillingness to sell to "an unknown group or individual," it's hard to imagine hordes of eager buyers.
On the other hand, if there was an interested buyer, Nambu might be reviving the site to make tr.im a more attractive purchase as it closes the deal. And if not, hopefully this move will at least lead to a more gradual shutdown.