Tim pointed me to Matt Mullenweg’s post back in May that WordPress now owns the top level domain .blog. Seems like it cost them $20 million, which seems a ton—but it points to the big business that is the TLD industry these days. For shits and giggles I looked into what it would cost to register bava.blog, and and seems to secure it would start at $250, with more if I had to bid for it at auction. I guess they need to make up their costs, but that ain’t cheap.
Too rich for my blood, especially given it is simply an affectionate term I use for this here site that runs quite well on a $12 .com. We’ve had to avoid the custom domain craze at Reclaim given the varying costs and the fact we provide a free domain with our packages which limits our choices, but at the same time I’m not sure we are missing anything. Seems the market has become glutted and what you pay for in terms of a namespace doesn’t necessarily match the value.
Plus, it says € ones instead of $ ones, so I think that is even more! I did a Google and it said $278 plus pennies, so it is?
Do the use the € ones in the mountains, UNCLE Jim?
Good call, Tina, I conflate the two currencies still, I am terrible. So closer to $300 than $250—makes me even more .blog averse 🙂
We use the Euro here, but I still thing in $$$ 🙂
Pondering how rich wordpress now are that they can’t find a better use of money than spend millions on owning a TLD
What does it say about the world that TLD’s now get owned
I agree, the TLD market is crazy. Dan Gillmor was advocating that journalists do a deep dive into the world of TLDs, ICANN, etc. We are going through a real issue these days given if you don’t get ID protect for your domain chances are your info will be acquired and the spam, scam calls and emails will start soon after. It’s a pretty insane racket, at least in the U.S., and we really have to figure out a new model to make sure every domain gets ID Protect cause I feel dirty.
This group Citizen Ex did some of that with a handful of TLDs and it’s super interesting http://citizen-ex.com/stories. Most damning if you haven’t read about it is the .io extension (ironic given that’s one I picked up awhile back, maybe I need to rethink that choice myself).
grrr…I don’t want to give up my .io — maybe I’ll just file it in the “things I should be guilty about but am hiding from myself” bin.
That’s a very big bin for me 🙂
also .tv domains, tuvalu will disappear with global warming, then what happens to the tv domains?
I thought about buying some non .com domains for my stuff, but i figure funny urls aren’t my turf, and stealing from other countries is a bit Columbus
The big bite is the early access fee? The regular price is 30 bills a year? I splurged to get cog.dog (with Sir Timmmmyboys assistance), and even with a $42 yearly fee, the vanity works on me.
Take your chance when they go open? It is a shadowy business. We should do a daily create on picking weird TLDs
Yeah, I can’t say I wouldn’t bite at bava.blog if it was $30, and I kinda dig that we got folks interested in vanity domain .domains. I am planning on pulling the trigger on a .it domain soon, which is not cheap either—so as usual I am no one to lecture anyone 🙂
.it is it! I bought cogdog.it long ago as a “business site” way before even Hippie Hosting, now it, and cogdog.info are forwarders awaiting a house cleaning.
There was something funky about getting it, and the last time I checked it was a hurdle to move the domain off of nasty Godaddy.
I did this site for an Italian Digital artist (he has a family connecting to Barbara G) and even an Italian citizen like Emilio had trouble getting a .it — you might dig some of his projects http://emiliovavarella.com/
Antonella got a new wool site that she has yet to build at woolpine.it, I do love the Italian TLD. I remember you got cogdog.it soon after leaving NMC, I was always secretly jealous 🙂 YNOBAVA.IT
Virginia needs cede from the union then you can have a morally ok ba.va domain
West Virginia……. pah
Oh no, turns out you got poped https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/.va
So basically Jim, you need to become Pope. Now your Italy move makes sense
Crazy! .va is a Vatican City TLD. Wow, this whole TLD rabbit hole is fascinating. I might change my local host names and only access via ba.va 🙂
Also, notice the Vatican City library address:
bav.vatican.va
Jim Groom – “The Pope’s Librarian”
Pondering whether soon you’d have a “DOOG” a domain of one’s god