It used to be that if you didn’t have a .com domain, you pretty much doomed. It was the global standard when establishing a presence on the Web.
It is becoming increasingly apparent, however, that having a .com domain is becoming less important. Part of it has to do with the fact it’s so difficult to come up with a half-decent .com domain, which forces companies to invent silly monikers. The other reality is it’s now possible to not have a .com domain without missing a beat.
This move away from .com has been evident with a wave a new startups that have emerged in recent months. For example, there’s:
- identi.ca (.ca is Canada’s top-level domain)
- Cli.gs (the domain for the Sandwich Islands off the southern tip of South America)
- Bit.ly and – Present.ly (.ly is Libya’s domain name)
- Chi.mp (the domain for Northern Mariana Islands)
- Nouri.sh (the domain for the Island of Saint Helena)
With little space left in the .com market, creativity has literally become the mother of invention. It may take some time before everyone becomes accustomed to not using a .com domain but eventually people will stop thinking about it when using .mp or .ly.
Update: There’s a new service called Domai.nr that is trying to leverage the idea you can use different domains.
Technorati Tags: domain names
.com will become even more irrelevant with ICANN allowing any suffix to be used. I like the idea of a hierarchy, but it clearly no longer works. If it did, you’d be markevanstech.ca .
Don’t forget about all the xxxx.it ‘s (Italy I presume)
With the decreased emphasis on the .COM domain it will allow for greater creativity in naming websites. Years ago I tried hyper-localization and registered a .TO domain name. It was kitschy but didn’t catch on. I think it still has some potential though.
The .TV domain is great if you are setting up an online video channel and want it to be like a TV station.
I was at WordCamp Toronto yesterday and Matt Mullenweg’s personal website is ma.tt – I didn’t even know there was a .TT domain name until yesterday!
Since domain names don’t figure all that highly in search engine algorithms, it’s important that you can ‘own’ that cute name on the Internet. By that, I mean that you come up in a Google search for the way searchers might come looking for you. You had better make sure that you own the version without that dot. If not, whoever does is going to be eating your lunch.