Relying on others
It’s always uneasy to think that our success depends on others. And when others blow up, as Tr.im almost did, it’s temping to make case that you shouldn’t rely on others for plumbing like URL shortening.
Before we all build or license our own services to do common things, let’s not forget the Twitter.com in Twitter.com/username or the Facebook.com in Facebook.com/username. Sometimes it’s worth it to invest in using platforms owned by other companies, despite the risk, as Intuit did with Microsoft Windows, and Microsoft did with IBM. It turned out to be a pretty safe decision to use Feedburner for RSS feeds for the past 4 years, and TinyURL for URL shortening for the past 10+ years. Even many of the people who built version 1.0 on a platform that wasn’t right for them as HARO did on Facebook were able to retool and build successful businesses. Twitter-age URL shorteners that are trying to make a business out of it like Bit.ly and Ow.ly I think are a pretty safe bet as far as things go.
