this post was submitted on 12 Feb 2024
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I doubt most people know that country TLDs are different from vanity TLDs. I know when I look up domains, they're usually all smooshed together and then the terms are in a giant block of ToS.
The vast majority of people likely don't know that .tv isn't a vanity or official TLD, but the Tuvalu country TLD. And its royalties make up nearly 10% of the state's budget.
So... twitch.tv is actually twitch...Tuvalu???
Yes. Other common ones include .fm for Federated states of Micronesia, .io for British Indian Ocean Territories and .ai for Anguilla.
.be, of youtu.be, is Belgium.
Back in the days bit.ly was a quite popular link shortener (it's still a link shortener) and when shit went down in Lybia gadda.fi (or some other spelling don't remember) plopped up as a novelty shortener to protest against using just any country TLD for random internet domains. .fi should be fine, it's Finland.
Interesting. I wonder if that has anything to do with why some companies started dumping them for regular TLDs.
Similarly, the .io TLD is for territories around the Indian Ocean. But for some reason, it became popular for cheap little flash-style games.
Yeah, this is most probably true.
Honestly though, I don't even know what most of the generic domains are that were created. It's still deeply ingrained in me that any serious website should be using .com, .net, or .org. But... the amount of domains that were purchased just for the purpose of resale at an astronomical value has made so many of those unreachable.
There are some dot-coms that I have wanted for years which have been sitting stagnantly for more than two decades. I'd love to buy them, but there's no way I'd pay the asking price. At least generic TLDs break that stalemate for a lot of folks.
Here in Germany most (German) websites use .de, so its definetly not unprofessional here.
I am also not surprised that .de is one of the most used country TLDs out there.
It's certainly become normalized. And it was good to open up the TLDs for various purposes. 😊