Dave Winer has a new link page that counts clicks on the 40 most recent links he’s posted on Twitter using the Tr.im URL shortener. He said on his blog that it’s updated 12 times an hour. Checking the statistics for 40 links 12 times an hour is 480 API requests, which is significantly more than the Tr.im API permits:
The tr.im API method trim_url and trim_simple together have a set rate limit of 48 new URLs per day, up to 10 per hour, per IP address. This is intentionally set on the low side to prevent any overwhelming malicious insertion of data into our database. trim_destination has the highest rate limit set to the same number of URLs we create per day, so that you can more efficiently determine the destinaion URL for all or any tr.im URLs. For all other methods other than these two, there is a limit of 1,500 requests per day, up to 120 per hour, per IP address.
When you hammer an API like this you degrade services for everyone else. This fact seems to be lost on Winer, even though Comcast shut his home Internet connection down for his laughably excessive bandwidth use and he’s blogged about how Twitter’s performance is being harmed by API abusers.
Winer says he’s using an API call to grab the last 100 links. Which suggests he’s only going over the API limit by 2 (at least for new urls). But still going over it.
If it’s per IP address though, Dave may not be in violation. Doesn’t he have a large or small block of IPs he can use, as well as some servers? If that’s the case, he’s not in violation as long as he uses different IPs.
I doubt Winer has the tech chops to round-robin his requests. I think he simply hasn’t read the ToS or doesn’t care
“For all other methods other than these two, there is a limit of 1,500 requests per day, up to 120 per hour, per IP address.”
I think he makes one request per hour(?) that returns 100 URL’s. No violation here.
tr.im Dave Winer