28Over the weekend I read a twitter post about how Google had recently purchased g.co and the importance of short links to web site URLs. I'd been seeing the .co domain names pop up here and there but after reading the article I went ahead and purchased ranchhouse.co (rhd.co was $4900) and a few others to have access to.
Then after working with the Ideal Video team, I noticed they are also using a short url of idealvideo.co - compared to their full URL of idealvideoproductions.com.
I'd be interested to hear Jeff's (Cattle.com)'s take on the .co domain names too.
So, anyway, clearly shortening your URLs is an item that is going to be necessary for the future. If you would like us to check into registering some shortened versions of your URL, just let us know.
We invest in domain names on the side and have attended several domain conferences over the years. While it's a small industry, it's made up of some interesting folks.
ReplyDeleteGodaddy and .CO made a big push during the Super Bowl and .co recently rolled over 1 million registrations back in June (compared to 96.3 million .com, 9.3 million .org, and 1.7 million .us), so it's still fairly new domain extension for those outside of Colombia. There are some smart people working to publicize it though.
I'm not a big fan of it as an alternative to .com for a primary website and I'd rather have a lesser quality .com instead. Too many people instinctively add .com to the end of their domains and I'd be too concerned about losing visitors to the .com.
As you mentioned, there seems to be more value as a URL shortener than anything. URL shortening became a big with Twitter's 140 character limit, but there are a lot of negative implications to using a URL shortener instead of the actual link.
BTW I visited with the CEO of the .CO registry earlier this Spring at a domain event and found out he has family involved in cattle in Florida.