GoDaddy Inc. (NYSE: GDDY), and Verisign (VRSN) are seeing an upswing in people registering “personal domain names” just to point them to their social media sites.
It seems people have gotten the word that they don’t control their social media pages, the underlying social media company’s do so they are registering these personal domain names and pointing them to a their social media page.
According to a press release Godaddy published today said they are seeing an increase of 37% of such domains in the past 18 months.
Rabbi Dan Medwin, Publishing Technology Manager for the Central Conference of American Rabbis is quoted as saying:
“The Web is now the de facto place where folks go to learn about a person or company, I registered DanMedwin.com so, if someday I wanted a personal website, whether a blog or a resume, I’d have it available. It is essentially my personally curated ‘brand’ of myself for the world.”
The press release goes on to say; “Recently, VeriSign, the registry for .com domain names, stated they saw an increase of more than 10% for domains pointing to sites like Facebook and LinkedIn in Q2 versus Q1.”
Very interesting news. Domains are an easy tool for finding places that might not be as easy to find otherwise, which is why in my opinion, so many successful apps are investing in domain brands. Its a lot easier to find an app by typing in XYZ,com and being directed to a download page, than to search through a million apps in the app store.
So its a navigation play in essence that has now carried over to personal social media pages. Many people also now use domains to direct people to their ebay stores as well.
LOL — IMO such strings are a little egotistical (see http://nooblogs.com/2015/01/06/why-naming-a-website-after-yourself-is-like-being-a-jerk-off-in-public 😉 )… well, like I say in the post: unless you intend to write something *autobiographical*.
On the same site, I just also posted “Publishing Relaunched” where I consider similarities / differences between old + new media (and I’ve also been writing about that on remediary — one of *my* “personal” blogs).
To cut to the chase: The economics of TITLES have experienced a major economic shift. But that is also missing a big part of the plot. I’m actually still working on the plot (LOL) … but I’m pretty sure it has a lot to do with something like “social institutions” (e.g. books, publishing, copyright, etc.).
I’ve got my full name in .com and first name in a few extensions. Nice to have. I wish I could get Steve.com, but don’t think I can manage that buy.
I’ve been pointing custom domain names to my social pages for some time now. I even made this suggestion during a Q & A session at the last SoCal Domainers Conference. I registered LikeUs.net and FavoriteUs.com, some time ago, for just that purpose.
I really believe that, as more everyday people begin to understand the real power which domain names possess, we will see an exponential increase in the number of registrations. Facebook and Twitter have proven that just about anyone can create a website. By way of pointing one’s own domain name to their social site, they are creating a personal identity too.
I boldly predict that, in the not too distant future, a huge number of people will each have a number of personal websites reflecting their interests and opinions. Many will register domain names for each of their websites. Who wouldn’t want a good address on the information highway?
That’s a cool feature of Epik. Epik doesn’t charge to redirect your domains, so I tried an experiment with:
MindControlApp.com
to see how Google indexes the content.
But, I think monopolistic Google is suppressing twitter in the results, so there is no advantage with twitter. Maybe, Facebook.
http://www.google.com/search?q=site:twitter.com/mindcontrolapp
The twitter handle and domain are exact match, but I think Google is giving twitter the shaft, so one doesn’t enhance the other.
Makes sense.
I had a feeling this would happen as time passed. I picked up my GF’s full name and a few family members. Also, was able to get mine on the drop. Good thing I knew how that process worked..lol.
-Omar