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On the tr.im shutdown, @mavrevmatt says that "content publishers should offer shortened links with their own domain name" to avoid the confusion and risks inherent in the URL-shortening business. (http://mavrev.com/site/story/the_begining_of_the_end_trim_shuts_down) I agree. Branded shorteners help resolve one of the main problems with anonymous ones: the fact that users have no idea where they're going when they click on a link (though tools like TweetDeck have come a long way in terms of helping resolve that). And it would keep content publishers responsible for maintaining links to their content, rather than having them outsource it. Another solution would be for Twitter to simply take over the shortening of all URLs that are tweeted. No, not via a Twitter-branded shortening service; that still leaves users with links that don't mean anything until they're clicked. Rather, I think the solution would be for Twitter to offer some kind of API-based system for on-the-fly shortening and expanding. Within tweets, URLs could be represented by some kind of very short snippet of text, like LINK or URL. A mouseover or click could expand it to its full glory; it could even include metadata and other useful info. A system like this would ensure that users would always know where they're going, and allow developers of Twitter applications to make use of the shortening functionality without having to worry that a specific shortening service would disappear. I haven't thought this concept through in detail, but having Twitter create an API for shortening and expanding URLs doesn't seem like an entirely unreasonable solution to the current problem.

Originally posted at http://uri.is/nw