Forbes.com just told the world about .Me domains and highlighted Meet.me as one of the top 10 sites using a .Me domain that people should keep an eye on.
“After you’ve found the guts to start your own venture, have assembled the right team, and have an initial product, you start brainstorming company names. As you’re brainstorming company names, you cross them with available domain names. You quickly realize the only decent length “.com”s left are “apsoif.com”. ”
“Sadly, even if you can figure out how to pronounce that, there’s no way your customer is going to remember it.”
“Then came the great country of Montenegro, meaning black mountain.””
.Me domains were “made available to the public in 2008. Since then, US startups have flocked to “.me”s. “”
“Why? Well, first off, they’re available.”
“Second, if you have the choice between “.am”, “.ag.”, “.ws” and other similar names, you’re going to choose the one that actually means something in English.”
“Third, the “.me” has a personalized feel. You can connect with the user.”
“Many other startups ..have used the .me naming convention.
“A few cool ones are:”
1. Brideside.me – Bridesmaid dress startup out of Chicago
2. Meet.me – Dating/meetup site
3. Tap.me – Advertising & gaming site
4. Outgrow.me – Place to discover successfully funded Kickstarter & IndieGoGo projects
5. Hoot.me – Connect with classmates and tutors
6. Bazaart.me – Become a fashionista through Pinterest
7. Tango.Me – Tango is a video calling service
8. Sonar.Me – App that tells you when your friends and friends’ friends are nearby
9. Homescreen.Me – App that lets you share your iOS devices’ homescreens
10. Join.Me – Instant screen sharing app
Good News for my blog… 🙂
Good news for all new alternative extensions
Nice benefit for the .com holders to see these developed and enjoy the added traffic spill.
Curious to see if their experience is anything parallel to the o.co traffic bleed.
STFU Forbes.com
Stop talking BullShit Forbes.com
You don’t even own Forbes.ME
Apsoif.com. lol
That’s kind of catchy
But the writer still doesn’t get it. The “.coms” *are* available. Just not at $20.
Thanks for the article Mike. Do you have any idea what is required to purchase a premium .me domain? Is there a set cost? Do you know anyone that could get this done at a reasonable fee?
We’ve been watching a me domain name and the page resolves to this
Yes! It’s available!
PREMIUM-NAME.me is a premium domain and it can be acquired through our Development Program. Send us the application and we will get you the domain in no time. Try .ME!
Thanks in advance,
WBTDC
Are startups “flocking” to .me?
No .me’s in the ycombinator class of 2011.
Or 2010.
Or 2009.
Certainly if there was a ‘flocking to .me’ we’d see at least one there of all places.
When I read an article that characterizes domain names in terms of what’s unavailable to hand-register in .com, that’s not an article being written by someone who has a fucking clue.
Mike, what have you done. Now the .me/.junk peddler from Azerbaijan will start sending those mass emails again. Just google ‘Marysa Lykhas’.
Is there light? What portion of .me investors have profited? relative to premium .com holders?
Its already really hard to sell .Coms, already a very inefficient thinly traded market, meaning huge spreads and potential bargains. Making this large market efficient could take a decade. Why would marketers and investors who are already cheap, confused and probably broke going to invest in alternatives to .Com? They only will as a small portion to .com investing and deployments so no rational reason to risk the time and money when you can have a flight to .com quality and still have a difficult job ahead.
When I click on meet.me I get redirected to Meetme.com, so IMO it’s inaccurate and misleading to report that Meet.me is “one of the 10 sites using a .Me domain that people should keep an eye on” (the other 9 mentioned do go to dedicated .Me sites).
Congrats to the sellers of Meet.me for $450,000 last November but until – if ever – the buyer takes the plunge and the website changes to Meet.me, it looks to be a defensive domain purchase.
It’s interesting to note the big lift in traffic that Compete.com shows that both domain names experienced from April to June this year from almost flat-line positions to a very healthy 2,189,033 for Meetme.com and and 9,397 for Meet.me (0.43% of the Meetme.com traffic, if Compete.com stats are accurate).
some of the .Me (like Meet.Me) are really excellent domains that might match the .com values
They missed the best example- about.me — an app that lets you create a page about yourself but you run it on a top level domain such as http://davidsams.net. Because people search for David Sams not “about David Sams”
.ME fails the radio test- which will get the person to the landing page- which will ensure ROI on the ad:
3 Minutes and 5 Questions Will Reveal How Much You Can Save on Car Insurance
Log on and learn at Save Me dot Com
or Log on and learn at Save dot Me
When you have to say the url, the word dot mucks up the expression
Isn’t Met.ME and MetMe.com better?
Hi domainers,
Question: We’re developing an accessories website and have the .com and .me domain names.
We like the idea of the personalised .me, but wonder if the domain name would be hard to remember or if people will understand a .me address.
What do you think domainers, should we use the .me or .com, considering we own both and its for an accessories business?
“Shines the light on .me” – Good one, Mike.
Let the Midnight Special, shine a light on me;
Let the Midnight Special, shine the ever-lovin’ light on me…
“Making this large market efficient could take a decade.”
The domain name market will never be ‘efficient’ since there’s zero fungibility between products. Without a capacity for substitution, pricing can never standardize.
“and highlighted Meet.me as one of the top 10 sites using a .Me domain that people should keep an eye on”
The writer said nothing of the kind!
What she said was “here are a few cool ones”, and
anyone that knows anything about great hacks
will tell you that those names are hardly ‘top tier’
in the .me TLD…
And why would meet.me be an example anyway?!
…it just redirects to meetme.com, lol.
anyhow, it’s hard to find good .Me not already registered
.tv and .me are the only two country codes that mean anything in English, they should both continue to do quite well on both the sales aftermarket and in end-user development/investment.
This article shows that Forbes does not care about the quality of it’s content anymore.
On its way to content farm?
Thanks for including Bazaart.me in the list!
Highly appreciated.
Stas
Of course, .com names are the best. But what I’m finding. Start-ups that have received Series A funding, not Seed and Incubators (those companies usually choose quirky names that they registered for $8,) are turning to .me names as a branding strategy. I’ve sold most of my .me names to entrepreneurs, mainly from Silicon Valley. In fact, sold another one, outfit.me., to a Bay Area entrepreneur this past week. I’ve developed several .me names and they did quite well, having been acquired by a Danish company. I have friends that have launched names under the .me extension – thecomplete.me, about.me, flavors.me, attachments.me, visualize.me, – innovative products with a “personal” angle. I do know the names are hot with Silicon Valley startups that have at least $1 million in funding.
Steven – What percentage of the funded startups are using .me? I’ve only seen About.me take off (profit is questionable) and the most popular .me domain seems to have been Despicable.me. Of course, Sedo might not like what’s on the .me [NSFW].
Acro
I don’t think you can talk in terms of percentages.
I mean of the 125 Million .com’s what percentage of those have been used for funded startups?
Techcrunch.com covers a lot of these and we have a running story on that on thedomains.com
http://www.thedomains.com/2012/05/07/how-hot-are-me-domains-this-company-covered-by-techcrunch-goes-with-a-typo-of-a-hack/
@Steven
Congrats on your .me sales, I also have been seeing Silicon Valley startups moving to alternative extensions, presumably b/c the .COM isn’t available. But the problem is most of these startups fail and you never hear about them again after they initially launch and get press coverage at launch/funding. Very few .me’s/.co’s/.ly’s are successful, and I truly wonder if it even occurs to these entrepreneurs that they f*cked up their branding. I’m not going to say they failed BECAUSE of a shitty domain or because they didn’t get a .COM, but I bet it plays a role. The fact is your company name just isn’t AS credible and memorable as it otherwise would be if you don’t have a .com. And these startups already have such an uphill battle statistically in terms of success … they NEED to be taught to get a .COM where possible. These startup incubators need to be given a Domain Name 101 course and in turn educate their entrepreneurs.
my 2 cents
@M — Again, you’ll never hear me (pardon that) claim .me is better than .com. But if you build a great product, engage users, gain traction, iterate, have a solid business model in place, revenues will come. One startup .me that I particularly like, and think it could even reach Instagram status is via.me, developed by Rockstar programmers. It’s owned by Radian One, which has over $45 million in funding. Via.me – coded in Rails, HTML5, JQuery, CSS,, UI/UX – Masonry a la Pinterest. Back-end coded to scale, something Instagram did not prepare for in its nascent stage. This is a solid product. And should get better. I like its business model, and they have uber hackers and hustlers aboard. So far, besides, .com, I can’t see any other extension that has been embraced as much. My friends had no problems securing Series A rounds with their .me start-ups. Attachments.me also is a solid product, funded by the Foundry Group (Brad Feld), with nice revenues. Let’s see.
This is really a continuation of my domaining 6.0 post, its all about brandable domains and .Me domains are quite brandable
I neglected to mention a company founded by some pals formspring.me. Q&A site, with approx. $14-15 million in funding. Founded in 2009 as formspring.com (which now redirects to formspring.me) Similar to Quora (which right now has a great valuation) and StackOverflow, but with the key differentiator being answers are “opinions”, and not just “facts”, hence, the reason for going with .me for personalization. This could be a nice acquisition target. (Yahoo, Google, Facebook, Path). Nice UX/UI – looks great on Mobile. Not sure about revenues. Then again, same with Quora which could be better suited for Google (as it likes to aggregate information, data, facts). Formspring has more of a social feel.
Formspring.me definitely is in play. I expect Pinterest, Quora, Vimeo to get acquired by Summer’s end. Pinterest – between $2.5 – $4 Billion by either Facebook or Yahoo.
I love these ME names they are so cool, App.Me also sold for 50K i think was June.
I am not surprised .Me names have become so popular for US startups.
*
Together:
You forgot .us, which is also meaningful in English.
🙂
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Let us not forget jingly .LY names. E.g., local.ly sold for $100k last year.
There are about 300 very good .LY names making them unique and scarce.
As to premium .ME bargains, check: http://links2.me/~Bjd1$ce
.us is a joke. The remnants of imageshack.us killed off whatever branding it enjoyed.
MSG.Me just sold on Sedo for 25,000 USD
I bet they’ll be the #1 MSG SuperStore on the Internet! Can’t wait to shop there for all my MSG food-additive needs. 😉
Interesting article. I’m writing a book and using a .me domain. As with most things, ‘it just depends.’
On the other hand, I’m glad I have a neat 5-letter NE1UP.com domain I registered not long ago – there’s still stuff out there available for what you’re building/doing! Just slow down, brainstorm, write down ideas.
It doesn’t NEED to be a .com – if you have content that brings people, they’ll get there.