I was just reading this morning on Techmeme the various sites that are discussing the closing down of the URL shortener service Tr.im. I then came across a post written by Robert Scoble called, "Twitter’s platform shortcomings." I have written a number of posts about Twitter here and we are seeing the company mature and grow before our eyes like a child. Sometimes a child makes poor choices and sometimes they make us proud, but when I read things like the Twitter "blessing" and I have to cringe a little. Blessing exerts some connotation of power, and with power comes great responsibility as we all know. We see companies like Facebook with this same type of power and the same feeling of the hair standing on the back of my neck continues. I must echo Robert’s sentiment here when he states:
OK, most of you probably never have used tr.im to shorten your URLs so they fit into Twitter. But I did. I liked the URL better than bit.ly, which is the service that Twitter has “blessed.” Oh, how I hate Twitter’s “blessing.”
Pete Cashmore, of Mashable has another quote in his post that gives me the feeling all over again:
“…we just can’t justify further development since Twitter has all but annointed bit.ly the market winner.”
That from the Tr.im closing statement. That is far too much power for one company, but I know that is part of doing business. Google carries the same type of power and I have heard the likes of Michael Gray talk about the wielding of their power and how they can arbitrarily damn some sites and rise others to the heights of heaven. I use that metaphor because that is nearly godlike in its functionality. Google wants to be for good but not for evil and I suppose your definition of good and evil depend quite a bit on the way the ball bounces for you or against you. In this case it seems that the ball has bounced against the folks at Tr.im.
We see applications come and go and in this particular instance it has implications that might hurt people in one camp over another. To pick and choose who wins, who loses and how the game is played is far too much power in my opinion to give to companies. The FTC is dabbling in the game with blogging and "sponsored conversations" and I would assume that some constituents will be contacting their authorities for some regulation of companies that have the power to bless.
Photo via polishamericancenter.org
Tags: Twitter, Techememe, Robert Scoble, Corporate Responsibility, Google
