Tech Crunch did a story on Entrepreneur First which is a European accelerator for start-ups along the lines of the popular Y Combinator.
Entrepreneur First is the best place for Europe’s top technical individuals to meet and build world-changing startups in London. We select purely on the basis of technical talent, so you can apply before you have a team or an idea. Our intensive 7-month programme is designed to give you the best possible support in the first 100 days of your startup’s life. We’ve created 20 startups now worth …
The article today took a look at the start-ups that demo’d today and their pitch to investors. The one common theme when it came to the domain extensions used by these start-ups was .io. The tiny British Indian Ocean extension has been a favorite with start-ups but is also mired in some controversy. GigaOM wrote about how the people who should be benefiting are not.
Back to the Entrepreneur First list, there were 16 companies listed in the article and 7 of them are using a .io domain. When you look at those using a .com you will see that most had to add a prefix or use a hyphen. TryTyto.com for Tyto – Visual-Wise for VisualWise – JoinEncore.com for Encore. There was one new gtld on the list, Magic Pony Technology is using MagicPony.Technology.
Read the article on Tech Crunch
So interesting that you posted this. We just bought our first .io yesterday.. Thanks for posting.
Companies that use .io domains are known as being great at what they do. This blog post explains it well:
http://www.russellbeattie.com/blog/artisanal-websites-the-rise-of-io-domains-for-well-crafted-web-services
“These new .io sites are almost artisanal in nature – small, well crafted and functional. It’s like a TLD for techies with taste.”
The GigaOM story is attempting to make a political argument out of nothing.
I want my .US money …. and I’m sure some Palestinians might want some of the .il money…..
I’m sure even the Welsh want theirs..etc.etc.etc.
.io is reaching the general public though which is interesting.
@h4ck3r:
One would hope the success of .io will bring attention to this issue. It is a far cry from “nothing.”
“The Chagos Archipelago consists of over 50 small islands in the Indian Ocean. No Chagossians now inhabit the island, which once was home to 1,500-2,000 indigenous peoples…
The campaign of terror to forcibly remove the Chagossians began in the 1960s, during the British period of decolonization. In 1960, a US Navy admiral visited Diego Garcia to survey the land for a huge military base. At the time, the Chagos islands belonged to the UK and were governed from Mauritius. When Mauritius gained independence from Britain in 1968, it was under the condition that Mauritius would not claim Diego Garcia and the Chagos islands. This agreement – in direct contradiction with UN resolution 1514 and international law which stated that colonies being decolonized had to be done as a whole – not carved up for profit – was hidden from both the British Parliament and US Congress.
Following the (illegal) agreement, US/UK back terrorism campaign went into full swing to have the island “swept and sanitized” of the Chagossian people. It began with an embargo aimed at starving the population out. Cut off from basic supplies like milk, dairy, salt, sugar, and medication, many on the island left. Those remaining didn’t last long. They were told that if they didn’t leave, the island would be bombed. Then, in the Spring of 1971, US military officials gave the order to round up all of the pet dogs on the island and have them killed. About 1,000 pet dogs were taken – some straight from screaming children – and gassed with exhaust fumes from American military vehicles. The Chagossians were told that if they didn’t comply, the same would be done to them. The remaining Chagossians were rounded up and placed onto a ship – The Nordvaer – allowed to take only once suitcase. The horses were given precedence and were put on deck. The women and children were forced to sleep in the hull on bird fertilizer – bird shit. Marie Lisette Talate, a Chagossian, recalled,
“All of us Chagossians, women, children, it was ourselves who were the animals on the Nordvaer.”
From there, they were taken to the Seychelles islands to a prison – where they were kept in cells until finally being transported to Mauritius, where most of the Chagossians now remain. There they were left – without money, adequate housing, jobs, water, food, electricity, or any institutional support in a country unknown to them.
Not surprisingly, the Chagossian islanders began to die, some from malnutrition and disease, some from drugs, but many, as the islanders say, from sadness.”
Is the real issue the ccTLD or the people and their sovereignty? Why are we conflating the two?
The issues are separate. What if they returned but the .io ccTLD was paid for through a contract with their newly formed department of commerce? What that be better? Oh wait, it wouldn’t be, it would be called something else as .IO would no longer be appropriate because no doubt the name would change. .IO would become the new .YU
Maybe Chagos Islands – dot CI
Maybe Chagos Archipelago – dot CA or dot CH
How DARE Canada get .CA first!
How DARE Switzerland get .CH!
Who’s in charge here?
Maybe it would be .DG as that would make sense. That would be worth likely… $0 …unless Dolce & Gabbana wanted it. In fact, they (the 4000? people of which 2500 weren’t born there) would need to PAY for someone to run the registry infrastructure. Good luck with that happening unless the decided to network the island and manage their own stable infrastructure.
So what’s the cry for?
The people or the .io ? The two issues are separate and distinct.
If you don’t think they are separate please comment on the 5,000,000+ Palestinians who might think they have a claim .IL? Or the somewhat smaller but still larger group of indigenous Australians. I don’t know who makes money from .FK? Comments there?
By all means fight for the right of the people – the only thing with .IO will ultimately be whether it exists or not. Perhaps we can all join together and think of a new ccTLD that will be as successful for them? But the issue of .io being stolen is nonsense – the change you seek would force it out of existence.
To be clear:
I posted the above under the assumption they want to go back the island with a sense of independence from their overlords and be self-governing which would take them back to as this would be the only recourse under which they would have entitlement to revenues (unless there is a UN resolution on distribution of all funds from ccTLD to occupants of land I don’t know about).
I suppose they could be provided rights to occupation or be repatriated but that has little to do with .io (as government would still remain in force). They could be afforded reparations for stolen land, I guess. Still nothing to do with .io.
I suppose they could be granted rights to revenue but that opens the door to about 200 years worth of all territories that weren’t unoccuped making claims. We’re getting close to the American Revolution – why not step back just a few more years? The whole of Africa is up for discussion too, no doubt. I won’t even get into Australia because that’s too recent.
The situation with the Chagossians is most similar to the people of Palestine with the distinction that the Chagossians technically or otherwise never owned anything but the right to occupation (ant that was originally without consent as slaves).
So dot io? What has this to do with anything?