The .Co registry just announced today that Godaddy.com has been awarded X.Co.
This is the 4th single letter .co to be released
E.co sold for $81,000 in a charity auction sponsored by the .Co registry.
Twitter was granted T.Co to use as a shortener.
OverStock paid $350,000 for O.Co
X.Co is already up and running at Godaddy.com
Here is the the official announcement:
“”URL shortening services have become an integral part of online communications. Shortened URLs not only take less space (which is important for services like Twitter, Facebook and Digg, that restrict message length, or for use on mobile devices), they are also easier to remember and easier to verbalize. So it is no surprise that the number and use of shortening services has grown exponentially over the last few years.
The newest entry to the space is also the shortest and arguably the easiest to remember, too: X.CO, the free URL shortener from GoDaddy.com. This brand-spanking-new service just launched and is now the shortest of the shorteners. There will likely never be a shorter url shortening service – so Go Daddy has once again just raised the bar (or lowered it — depending on your POV!) for others to follow.
Naturally we’re super excited for X.CO!
Why? First, a URL shortener is a great application for a .CO domain and a natural extension of our value proposition by virtue of being one character shorter than .com, .net, .org, and .biz, and two characters shorter than .mobi and .info.
Second, Go Daddy has more than 8 million customers and 43 million domains under management. If only a fraction of them use X.CO as their URL shortener, it’s going to generate tremendous exposure for .CO through content and link sharing — and will likely drive more awareness, interest and sales of .CO domains for GoDaddy.com – which will help to spread the good word about the .CO TLD around the world. It’s a beautiful thing all around!
Third, GoDaddy.com is one of our valued core registrar partners — so their success is our success. We couldn’t be prouder to have Go Daddy launch their URL shortener on a .CO domain.
The final question is, does the Internet really need another URL shortener? There are dozens available, with new ones being created every day – certainly there are some good ones out there, right? Absolutely! We would be remiss if we didn’t give a nod to those who came before X.CO.
But with X.CO, today’s savvy, connected consumer has a new choice to make. From a features standpoint, X.CO offers everything that other URL shorteners offer, like robust analytics and tracking, vanity URLs, and more – but this baby is backed by the technical stability and support of Go Daddy, one of the most trusted, respected and well known Internet brands in the world. X.CO is just a baby right now. But you can rest assured that it will evolve quickly as this baby grows up – and will stay on the cutting edge of technology to deliver the most innovative features and benefits for your personal and business use. After all, that’s what Go Daddy does best!
To learn more about X.CO, go to: http://x.co/whatisxco
And don’t wait too long before you start using this baby! Remember – the vanity url service means that you will want to make sure to secure the keyword links for the content you care most about! For example, I just scored: http://x.co/dotco to link to our global site — and http://x.co/puntoco to link to our local site. Oh and of course, http://x.co/lori — because people need vanity URLs too! : )
In today’s online world, where every character counts, shorter is always sweeter. And it doesn’t get any shorter or sweeter than X.CO.
As with all things, when Go Daddy does something the right way. Even when they go small, Go Daddy does it in a big way!
Welcome to X.CO – a new era in URL Shorteners!
I know I’ve said this before, but I think viral marketing has to be taken seriously. It can change things so quickly. It’s going to make .co quite a bit stronger….
Conclusion: Yep, shorter is better.
The .co registry may be wise in re-investing at this point. Providing an incentive for an Overtstock or Godaddy to use their .co in main stream media would go a long way in introducing the extension to public.
A tv commercial for O.co saying it is the fastest route to savings. Four clicks and you are there.
BFitz,
I would say when t.co is being used to shorten daily tweets, that kind of exposure is pretty mainstream, wouldn’t you say?!
@Em John
Fully agree, but it takes a village. I bought dozens of .co, am developing and selling. I also have a brick and mortar business touching 25K customers a week. We acquired the 3 letter .co representing our business since the .com holder won’t return a phone call. We want to use it. However, we know without additional real companies using and promoting, we could confuse our universe of customers. Nobody has a greater interest in .co sticking than the registry and if I ran that company I would exchange some short term profit for long term exposure. In other words, tell the next big buyer of a single letter .co you will lower the price if they re-direct funds to main stream media promoting the URL. But I don’t run that company. No need to tell me how wrong I am, we can agree to disagree. I think the $30 price tag is good. If one has a real working business, online or not, $30 is nothing. It should keep those living in their parents basement “domaining” out of the way.
The world did not need another extension. It needed a good extension and now this good extension needs good management from first generation owners.
BFitz – We hear you loud and clear. Stay tuned! 2011 will be an exciting year. 🙂
@Juan Diego Calle
Any idea if Google or Facebook are coming on board with the dot CO domains?
G.co (Google?)
F.co (Facebook?)
FB.co (Facebook?)
Long term this could be very big for the dot co tld
We don’t have anything specific to report on that front. That said, it’s our goal to do deals where we’ll get significant exposure for the brand. We’ll continue working on that during the foreseeable future.
Agree 100% with Em John and BFitz.
Hopefully they continue to provide additional single letter domains to high visibility co`s.
@Juan Diego Calle
I think it becomes easier for you to partner with M.CO Microsoft, G.CO Google, etc. with these big name partners under your belt.
I think what we need is a sexy provocative TV commercials like Godaddy did several years ago to further expose the .CO extension. 5,000,000 to 10,000,000 registrations is not out of the question within couple years. That is potentially $300,000,000 in revenue and you can surely afford some big time commercials on prime time.
compliments to GoDaddy, it’s a great idea, probably I’ll leave the bit.ly service I use now
“Godaddy.com has been awarded X.Co”
but my question is… could a domainer that hasn’t the same money and power of GoDaddy awards a domain like this…??? 🙁
.
X.CO is certainly going to be shorter that BIT.LY
“X.CO is certainly going to be shorter that BIT.LY”
not sure, we must see how much the lenght of the code of each URL will be
.
“The final question is, does the Internet really need another URL shortener?”
Who cares? It’s a marketing exercise, ie creating a need for something that wasn’t there before.
Like it or loath it (.co), I hope Mr .biz is looking on and seeing what could have been.
Gotta say I like what I’m seeing so far. I was wondering the other day how many great domains .mobi still has under belt that never saw the light of day. FAIL.
Seems like some smart peeps at the reins of .co.
Think I’ll keep mine and maybe buy some more 😉
another URL shorter service?! …
“another URL shorter service?”
time ago one of these services has closed for lack of money to run it.. well, a service managed by GoDaddy never will stop work
Do you think Godaddy will allow you to capture a short vanity URL (like x.co/21) and then change it’s direction later? Or once it’s shortened, that’s it. No further redirects later.
These vanity URLs could start trading like domain names if they allow you to edit them later.
“Do you think Godaddy will allow you to capture a short vanity URL (like x.co/21) and then change it’s direction later?”
if they want, they can and I believe they’ll offer this option
“These vanity URLs could start trading like domain names if they allow you to edit them later.”
this is a further reason they must do that and open a vanity URLs marketplace
.
That would be nice if Godaddy would let you change the domain of the vanity URLs that are under you account.
But I doubt it will happen. Maybe if they set up some way to charge you for the service but I very much doubt they would do it for free.
They are a company after all and they have a bottom line to look after.
Still… for a small fee, I could see it being a marketable service and something great for domainers.
Cheers
Has anyone noticed that all the really good common Key words are already taken.
I mean that was fast.
Did you guys get any good key words?
Cheers
Slate -> I took some keywords like rent, rentals, rate, quotes, condos…
I also took some geo keywords.
Not sure though if we will one day be able to exchange them.
There are still very good keywords available, personally I have enough.
I was looking for some good small keywords. All the ones that came to my mind where already gone.
I tell you one thing. If I was Godaddy, first I would set up a CP (control panel) for every account in their shortener. Then I would set up a brokerage for those names and charge a fee to change them over to another account. $$$
That would be a win win for everyone.
Anyone who jumped on early enough could get a small usable name and possibly sell it for a sum of money, while Godaddy sets up a broker fee (lets call it $20) to transfer the name to another account.
That is money more money then what Godaddy would have gotten for the use of their shortener, its another chance for domainers to make some money, and most important, its a chance for an end user to get a quality short domain name to link to their site.
But then again, I am not a business
Cheers
I got lots of good ones – I will use them for blogging and link building to my sites.
Here are just a few:
http://x.co/insurance
http://x.co/hotels
http://x.co/18
http://x.co/fitness
http://x.co/tx
http://x.co/fr
http://x.co/de
I got hundreds – I got almost every single 2 letter combination possible.
@ Andrew Rosener
Nice one. Lets only hope that Godaddy is smart enough to set up a CP for the domains so that you can change them around as wanted.
Also in my opinion if they where smart they would set up some sort of Brokerage fees so that you can transfer the domains across accounts.
They can make money and you can make money that way.
I am sure if enough people contact Godaddy and ask for that they would surely look into it. I mean that is a good chance for them to capitalize off their domain shortener.
Imagine Godaddy charging you a $10 fee to change the short domains to another account. Then you can sell KEY WORDS to people with long names in need of a good short domain.
That would be sweet.
Just my thoughts.
Anyone notice that Godaddy now allows you to CHANGE what domain name your X.CO is pointed to now?
This is great, now if you have a great short vanity X.CO name and sell the domain that its pointed to now, you can still keep the vanity name and change it to another domain name that you own.
Now lets see if Godaddy will be savvy enough to set up a brokerage service that will allow you to change the ownership of the X.CO vanity name for a small fee.
Either which way… its still nice that you can keep the vanity names even is you sell the domain that its linked to now.
Cheers
I just might up my own brokerage since Godaddy doesnt seem interested in this. There is money to be made with this.