TLD Investors

Domain Investing Stats and Tips

What TechCrunch has taught me about the future of domains

by

Image courtesy of Pixabay.com

I read TechCrunch almost everyday. It’s a real pleasure to enjoy, but it also gives me a glimpse into the future of domains.

TechCrunch is an online tech magazine. It features leading internet startups which may one day become household brands globally. Because these startups are also the new leaders in the corporate world, they will also set the trend in domains. Therefore, when I read TechCrunch, I often check the domains used by these companies. I also check the countries where they are located, which gives me a global view on domain preference.

I particularly like to study lists of startups in reported events. For example, TechCrunch published on September 20 a list of startups in the latest class organized by Alchemist Accelerator, a premiere enterprise accelerator in Silicon Valley. Below are the 20 startups in the list and their domains. I found 11 or 55% of the startups use .com, followed by .io (6) and then .bio, .care, and .app.

21Squared (21Squared.com), Videoflow (Videoflow.io), Redbird Health Tech (RedbirdHT.com), Shuttle (Shuttle.io), Birdnest (TheBirdnest.io), Tag.bio (Tag.bio), nCorium (nCorium.com), Spiio (Spiio.com), Element42 (Element42.io), My90 (TextMy90.com), Nunetz (Nunetz.io), When Labs (WhenLabs.com), FirstCut (FirstCut.io), LynxCare (Lynx.care), Adian (GoAdian.com), Hardin Scientific (HardinScientific.com), ZaiNar (ZaiNarTech.com), SMART Brain Aging (BrainUOnline.com), Phoneic (Productive.app), Arkose Labs (ArkoseLabs.com)

Based on my daily reading of TechCrunch and the reported startups, here is what I feel may be the future of domains.

  1. .com will remain King.
  2. Companies may start with an extension such as .io but will upgrade to .com when they can afford.
  3. Brand matching is preferred.
  4. Domains composed of simple English words are preferred.

So, when you start a new business, try to create your corporate brand based on simple English words, then at the same time acquire the brand matching .com domain. A good example is Jack Ma of Alibaba Group Holding Limited. He created the brand “Alibaba” and acquired its brand matching Alibaba.com domain at the same time.

—–

Join me on LinkedIn for further discussion.

Originally published on Coreile.com

Comments

  1. Interesting Kassey, surprised not to see .co in that list. Seems like half the companies on “This Week in Startups” are using a .co extension.

    • Actually .ai may be overtaking .io as the most preferred extension for startups. But, they are just fad. Remember the love for .ly? Or the story of Art.sy? .co was the talk of town when it was repositioned from the country extension of Columbia.

      • Back 15 years ago it was .ws, .cc and .tv. These are trends names. Startups see them a cheap alternatives to .com which are cool but they are time limited, in 10 years they will look “very 2018” and people looking for alt tlds for startups will have moved onto something else. I think .co is starting to date from that respect.

  2. Some clearly have no idea what the are doing to choose and pretty average keyword combination then register it in .io.

    Element42.io for example. Even then it redirects to a .in so so who knows what they are using. Companies like this will not stay in business, they are likely making dozens of other business mistakes.

  4. One thing I noticed about all the domains on the list is the fact that they’re all short TLD’s. If I have a longer domain name would it make sense to try to shorten it using an alternative TLD as opposed to a longer .com domain?

domain name news