Domains that endure

September 2005

Over the past couple of weeks, two radically different hosting stories have floated across my transom. It's hard to imagine two stories more disparate than the rise of the .info domain and the devastation caused by Hurricane Katrina, but a strange quirk of timing meant that these two items appeared on the radar at about the same time. And they embrace two enduring truths about the Internet: some things attract a lot of attention for no readily apparent reason, and some things endure against all odds.

About a year ago, the .info domain space experienced a huge growth spurt. A combination of knockdown prices and smart marketing, along with a brief period in which registrars literally gave away .info domains caused a massive spike in registrations. Between September 2004 and February of this year, the number of .info domains more than doubled. According to one source, there were more than 32 million .info domain names, only slightly less than the names in the .com space, and about three times the number of .biz and other domains.

Some of these domains have been branded pretty well--the best example is probably New York's subway authority at MTA.info, which is the obvious place to look for transportation information in Skyscraper City. But honestly, is anybody else really making much use of these domains? Right now, the people who gave away .info domains are sending out renewal notices. Are people going to pay 15 bucks to keep them?