Short Web address sites form link-archiving group

Short Web address sites form link-archiving group

SAN FRANCISCO — The growing popularity of Web-address shortening services such as bit.ly creates the potential for a bevy of broken links should one of the providers suddenly cease operations.

Those providers are teaming up with data aggregation and syndication services company Gnip Inc. to form a system for archiving link data. That way, the links would keep working, even if the shortening service itself doesn’t.

The development comes less than a week after link snipper tr.im decided to cease operations — though it later reversed course.

These services convert super-long Web addresses into a handful of characters. That helps prevent those addresses from breaking into multiple lines when used in e-mails, news stories and other places. It also helps users stay within the 140-character limit on Twitter.

Called 301works — 301 is the server code for a redirect — the service is expected to launch in several weeks, Gnip said. Members will periodically submit lists of the original Web addresses that users shorten through their sites, along with the corresponding shrunken links they create, so the information can be stored.

Boulder, Colo.-based Gnip is footing the bill for now, and it will run and manage it. Participants are going to pick a nonprofit organization to manage the directory in the long term, Gnip said.

Shane Pearson, Gnip’s vice president of products, said some participants will make their data publicly available, while others will just use 301works to archive their data.

Vonage is making free international calls standard

NEW YORK — Unlimited domestic phone calls are nearly standard feature for landline plans these days. Now, Vonage Holdings Corp., which helped pioneer that feature with its Internet phone service, is expanding it to most international calls as well.

CEO Marc Lefar said last week that Vonage will include unlimited calls to more than 60 countries in a new standard plan that costs $25 per month, replacing a plan of the same price that included unlimited calls to just six countries.

The new Vonage World plan also replaces step-up plans that included expanded international calling, such as an “Enhanced World” plan that gave unlimited calls to 58 countries for $40 per month.

Lefar said that while domestic long-distance calling has been declining, international calls have been rising year by year, yet pricing hasn’t kept pace. He expects to market the new plan to immigrants in the U.S., including Asians and Latin Americans.

Vonage is the largest of the independent companies that supply their subscribers with adapters that let them plug their home phones into their broadband connections.

In its heyday it added hundreds of thousands of customers per quarter, thanks it part to its offer of unlimited domestic calling for a flat monthly rate.

But growth tapered off as it battled patent lawsuits, while cable and phone companies countered with their own unlimited-calling plans. Subscriber numbers are now slowly shrinking, to about 2.5 million at the end of June. That makes it the eighth-largest landline phone company in the U.S.

Vonage will still charge extra per-minute fees for calls to mobile phones in most countries under Vonage World.

Associated Press