Domain extension crazes: how trends and current events shape the market

Hype around ‘super intelligence’ drives speculation

Last month, US president Donald Trump signed an executive order that used the phrase ‘super intelligence’ instead of ‘artificial intelligence’. Soon afterwards, various market players started reporting a spike in demand for .si, the country-code domain for Slovenia. The chief driver appeared to be the belief that the abbreviation ‘SI’ is about to become commonplace. Demand rose sufficiently to create capacity problems for Slovenia’s registration system, which isn’t scaled for high volumes of traffic.

AI brand names are popular

Another factor contributing to demand is the nature of the subject. AI-related domain names have become much more popular in recent years. That popularity has driven rapid growth of .ai, the country-code domain for the tiny Caribbean island of Anguilla, as businesses involved with artificial intelligence have sought out suitable domain names. The number of .ai registrations has shot up, and .ai domain names now command high resale prices. In February of this year, bot.ai changed hands for USD 1.2 million. With prices like that, the speculative registration of .si domain names is easy to understand.

Crazes are nothing new

Such crazes are not new. In 2015, Google announced the creation of a new parent company called Alphabet and unveiled its domain name: https://abc.xyz. The announcement focused a lot of attention on the .xyz domain, which was relatively new and unknown at the time. Registrations rocketed and .xyz tripled in size, from 500,000 to 1,500,000 domain names.

Many TLDs benefit from other associations

Crazes are relatively uncommon, but extensions that benefit from alternative associations are not. For example, .io, the country-code domain for Britain’s Indian Ocean overseas territory, has become popular with technology companies because it’s like the ICT-industry’s abbreviation for input/output. Similarly, Tuvalu’s .tv domain is attractive to media companies because of the association with television. The fact that the domain belongs to one of the most remote countries in the world, a place with a tiny population, makes no difference.

In some cases, there’s a language-related reason for a domain to gain popularity. Since 2015, Estonia’s .ee domain has attracted a lot of interest in China because country-code domains with repeated letters are more memorable for people who speak a Chinese language. Currently, 45 per cent of all newly registered .ee domain names have Chinese registrants.

Registration crazes don’t always lead to usage

Most crazes don’t last long. The main reason being that many don’t lead to active websites and prolonged use of the associated domains. While extensions such .ai and .io have become familiar options for particular target groups and are now widely used for active websites, others such as Libya’s .ly have seen periods of speculative registrations followed by a decline in interest.

Country-code domains are under local law

One reason why the appetite for an ‘exotic’ domain sometimes tails off is that companies are wary of putting their websites under the relevant country’s legal system. Take the .ly domain, which became popular because many English words end with those letters. However, the registry for .ly then ruled that .ly domains had to conform to Libyan law and Islamic values – making Western companies reluctant to rely on .ly-based digital assets. Within the industry, therefore, the standard advice is know what rules apply to your domain name.

More than a technical choice

Domain name extension crazes illustrate that a domain’s value and popularity don’t depend entirely on technology or geography. Social developments, technological trends and media attention can also influence demand.

However, the lesson from history is that only a minority of suddenly fashionable extensions succeed in converting a craze into prolonged use. Many ‘shooting star’ domains are forgotten as soon as the next development or trend grabs the attention.