As you probably know by this point, the Internet has been around for a very long time. What many people don’t know is that it wasn’t originally intended for personal use.
No one actually expected people to start making personal pages, or pages dedicated to their pet bird, so the Internet became cluttered until most of the *.com names were taken and the only way to have a decent domain name was to use a different extension.
Originally the .com extension was for commercial use, hence it wasn’t expected that so many people would actually use it. Do you remember a time when .com was the only domain name extension available? Now we have tons of domain name extensions and some of them are rather strange.
One of the first additions to .com and .biz was .cc. This addition was made in the late nineties and is actually an Internet country code for the Cocos Islands. There have been thousands of websites registered with .cc, one of them being the instant messaging giant Trillian.
Another one that we have become familiar with is .mobi. What exactly is this? It’s an extension for mobile web pages. The mobile web pages need to be kept separate from the standard ones so people will know exactly which one they’re going to. When we say mobile, we mean cellular phones, Palm Pilots, and other handheld computing devices such as the iPod Touch. Usually the handheld device is directed to the .mobi website if the server detects the device. The reason for this is that the page needs to be formatted for a smaller screen.
This brings us to the .name extension. Remember what we said about the .com name? Well the .name extension isfor personal use. This means that you can use yourname.name and no one else will be able to have that domain name. Originally, only third-level domain names were available because the company didn’t want people sitting on popular surnames and making a living from selling them. Recently, however, second- level domain names have been allowed.
While the .TV domain name is a country code for Tuvalu, it is constantly used for websites pertaining to television. The word television is commonly shortened to TV, so it’s really no surprise at all.
The extension .IM does not stand for Instant Messaging, it actually stands for Isle of Man. This has become a popular one as of late, and been used for websites that have little to nothing to do with the Isle of Man. This is quite similar to the way .com now has almost nothing to do with the commercial industry.
Finally, there is .org. This is obviously short for organization. The domain extension was originally intended to be used by non-profit organizations and it obviously wasn’t entirely used for that. Usually this is what someone would purchase if they found the domain they wanted wasn’t available as a .com extension.
These are a few of the domain names that are out there. There are a lot more, but what we have here is a collection of the strangest. We hope you enjoyed this list and always keep an eye out for wacky domain name extensions!
By the way… Is your website indexed by Alexa? It’s a good idea to check. Read our tips.