I did it. I bought my first .us domain name today and have to admit it feels pretty good. I purchased SuicideHelp.us.

A lot of factors played a role in today’s purchase. One of the domain names in auction today at Bido was SuicideHelp.org. I know I always preach to NOT fall in love with your domain names, but for some reason I instantly fell in love with the name, not because I believed I can make money from it, but because I believed I could do some good with it. As soon as the auction started I placed several bids and kept bidding throughout. Seven out of the nineteen total bids were mine. At a certain point I told myself I have to stop, even then I continued. Finally, I stopped submitting bids at $205 which was $2 shy of the $207 winning bid. Without giving up and still believing I can do good with a similar domain I searched GoDaddy to see if any of the other extensions were taken. To my surprise .tv, . me, .us and .biz were still available.

So why did I go with the .us version?

• I like .us as it is my country’s domain extension.
• The other day I read Morgan Linton’s blog about which TLD’s are best for SEO. It outlined which TLD’s have done the best for him with mini-sites and the top had a .us domain extension.
• I’ve been reading and seeing a lot about the domain extension lately. In fact, one of the top sales of the week is a .us domain extension at $35,532.
• The icing on the cake…GoDaddy is currently running a special on .us domain names for only $4.99.

My plans for this domain are simple. I want to create a kick ass mini-site within the next 7 days that will hopefully provide some inspiring content to convince potentially suicidal people to stay with us. Once I get done with the mini-site I’ll post it for everyone to see.

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You didn’t know you could find love with a domain name? I watched this video and thought it was hilarious.

Thank you to Name.com for providing the above video.

I’ll be honest, I really didn’t get the idea behind .tel domain extension until watching this. Being a guy I needed it to be put in real world terms like the video

Here is a link to YouTube for another video explaining the use of .tel.

Seriously though I can definitely see the potential with .tel. Did I go out and register a ton of domain names, NO. I registered my full name and that’s it. I may go in later today and register my kids name, never know if this takes off. I wouldn’t want them to look back at me 20 years from now saying dad, why didn’t you get our .tel names. Visit Name.com to get your .tel domain for only $8.95 – currently the lowest price I’ve been able to find.

Why didn’t I go crazy and register a ton of the .tel extensions? I’d say I’m a little apprehensive at this point when it comes to new extensions. I also liked the .mobi extension and lost a few hundred dollars.

Random thoughts…
I see the use for it with personal names, businesses and geographic locations. To what extent will it be used, I don’t know. The future of this extension depends on the cell phone applications and the adaption of major corporations across the world. MySpace and BT have already taken a step in this direction by offering the extension to their users. Read more about this here. I believe there is also an iPhone application in the works as well.

I understand the inability to develop or forward like a standard domain name.

I realize the search engine possibilities, simple use of keyword integration.

Picture owning Chairs.tel, although you’re not able to develop a site or sell a chair through the domain you can provide a site address redirecting them to a site that does.

Check out the videos and Name.com for more information.

***UPDATE***
I just read on DomainNameWire.com that there have now been over 100,000 registrations of .tel.

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About two weeks ago Bob Parsons insinuated on his video blog that the domain extension .TV would vanish with the sinking island of Tuvalu. Because of this brand new discovery (sarcasm) Bob is jumping ship and getting on the .me wagon. You can watch for yourself below.

It is true that Tuvalu is sinking, this is nothing new. We have known that the island of Tuvalu has been sinking for years and years. In fact this very same .tv discussion was mentioned back in 2004 on USAToday.com’s website. Reading the article explains the .tv extension is going nowhere, even if the island of Tuvalu does sink.

So why is Bob Parsons making a fuss of this now? Either he didn’t read the article in USA Today from 2004 or he is trying to make money. My guess would be the latter.  Bob is doing what he does best and trying to generate a buzz around the .me extension to boost registrations. If this was anything but about advertising Bob would simply use the .com version of his name which he owns and forwards to his .me extension.

I did email Bob’s PR Specialist Melanie today and asked that she pass on the question “Why the recent change of heart with the extension .tv”.  Actually I requested an interview with Bob Parsons about two months ago, November 24th to be exact. I submitted my questions and have been told with the holidays and now the Superbowl advertising Bob is extremely busy. I have to question the comment about Bob being busy, on January 14th I posted an interview he did with .INC Magazine. In that interview Bob was asked, you must be a real busy guy? Bob’s simple answer, “actually I’m not”. Hopefully Bob will read this and give some response.

In the mean time, don’t give up on the extension .tv, it is one of my favorites

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NetRegistry Joints NetFleet in Australian Domain Sales Industry

Sydney, December 29th, 2008 – Netregistry, Australia’s leading domain name provider, has partnered with Netfleet to deliver a cutting edge domain aftermarket website for the .au domain market. This initiative has the potential to create a vibrant and profitable market, trading domains for their actual worth – sometimes hundreds or thousands of dollars.

“We see significant growth in this area”, says Larry Bloch, CEO of Netregistry.
“Currently our efforts are focused on education as much as anything – most people do not even realise that domain names are now tradable assets so it’s a question of creating the industry as well as satisfying the demand.” Continue reading…

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