According to a Sunday statement by Nambu Networks, since the attempts to find a buyer for its URL shortening service Tr. im have fallen flat, the service is being shut down as its running is no longer cost-effective.

Announcing the decision to cut off Tr. im, Nambu said that Tr. im would no longer be accepting new URLs; however, it would continue redirecting links until at least the end of this year.

Tr. im was apparently weighed down by the emergence countless competitors in the link shortening service arena; and the fact that the service last week was hit by a denial of service attack probably proved to be too burdensome for its operator.

In fact, recently there has been a lot of fuss about URL shortening services, particularly as they are used by criminals to entice people into visiting phishing or illegal Web sites.

Mentioning the shutting down of Tr. im, Nambu wrote on its home page: "We regret that it came to this, but all of our efforts to avoid it failed. No business we approached wanted to purchase tr. im for even a minor amount. No one perceived any value in it, or they wanted to operate a shortener under a differently branded domain name."

Nambu's post mentioned that Twitter's overt preference for Tr. im rival Bit. ly largely affected its business and growth potential!