HN Explorer

Ask HN: Why the recent flurry of .io domains?

18 points by Jeremy1026 ↗ HN
I have noticed over the past 3 months or so a bunch of new websites being announced. Is there a particular reason that .io domains are becoming popular as of late? It's not their affordability, seeing as the cheapest registrar I've found was about $75.

16 comments

[ 13.0 ms ] story [ 93.1 ms ] thread
bmelton
I think it's mostly just due to the fact that a $75 .io domain is still many times cheaper than having to purchase an already-registered domain from somebody outright. Plus, it's short, and there are still tons of domains available on it.
birchbird
It's usually because the ".com" version of the domain is taken and the sites cater to a more tech savvy audience. I'm not sure I've seen examples of medium or large companies/services using .io domains. (Exception would be survey.io, but it's a few years old)

As psycr says, it's also a reference to I/O and could also represent 1 and 0.

ed56
Because Stone Cold said so.
argonaut
One big reason is that if you're making a B2D product (business to developer), adding a .io to your name is pretty acceptable.

See: segment.io, filepicker.io, etc.

These companies have adopted the ".io" as part of their company name, all in order to get a cheap domain. If you tried to buy a domain name like segment.com, that would be around $100k (ballpark). (Segment.com is probably not actually for sale, since an actual business is using it right now!)

moonboots
I chose an io domain my site http://typing.io because of the input/output programming reference. It's also more difficult to find a reasonable .com domain related to typing practice.

The registrar I'm using is about $48/year [1] with no price bumps for renewals.

[1] http://en.gandi.net/domaine/prix/detail/io/

ixacto
This is a great tool, thanks for building it.
RileyJames
We chose to use .io as opposed to .com because io seems to be accepted within the development / tech community. Rather than come up with a web 2.0 domain name we'd prefer to use the name we like. http://theoria.io. If the product didn't have a tech / dev audience I'd probably go with something else.
blazing_grey
As everyone else is saying, it's still a pretty uncrowded namespace and the 'IO as in input/output' thing is great for B2D or D2D sites. More concretely, it's a way for me to have a personal site whose domain is 6 characters, all of which mean something (http://lsh.io, my initials and "input/output").

Thread derail: I just bought that domain recently. What's the MVP for an engineer's personal site?

uladzislau
I'm happy about .co domain zone as well. An average $20 year for one domain vs. $8,000 asking price for the same domain in the .com zone. I really hate domain squatters.
fakeer
It's like real estate. You found a company or whatever and have good money - you buy a land or house in a suburban area(not yet developed). You leave that land just marked or fenced for years and when the area develops your land is worth several times the price you actually paid for it. I need land there, I am buying it from you at the current prices and not the one you bought it for. Am I angry and find it unfair? I don't think so. People take advantage of opportunity. It's normal and natural. Domain hoarders are good investors IMHO. Domain hoarders, not squatters.

I think domain squatting is illegal anyway, isn't it? The difference being squatter purchases the domain after you register your trademark/product(which you should have bought) and hoarder has already done that in the past (betting on good name/term/phrase) so you need it buy it from him/her if you want that domain that bad (e.g. fb.com).

18pfsmt
I'm pretty sure your parent was referring to people that purchase domains without any purpose other than selling it to someone that actually wants to use legitimately. I don't think he/she is trying to figure out why people buy domains and park advertising on them.
fakeer
That is exactly why I told him that it is perfectly fine and legit to do that. I didn't mean to sound anything else, if at all you heard so. Though it was not clear whether he actually meant a squatter or a hoarder.
fakeer
It's because of "I/O - Input Out". Gives a nerdy touch to the URL.

Maybe also because it's one of those easy sounding, feels real short and quick like some other domains i.e. .in, .co and .ly. Nth beats a .com yet.

Anyway reason you think, we might start getting single character TLDs? As in .a, .k , .z &c?

roryreiff
For us (Splash.io), it was a matter of not having the ability to purchase splash.com, and that our URL is not really that important (we are a mobile app, App store ranking and searchability is a way bigger issue). Plus, .io seemed reasonably acceptable for our product. We also nabbed getsplashapp.com, but splash.io is shorter, and I think easier to remember.