This Post is All About Me

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By: James Koole on June 4th, 2008
Posted in: Industry News
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Comments: 6

I remember when I was a kid going into those touristy shops. Up by the checkout they would have all sorts of personalized items for sale – license plates, mugs, keychains. With a name like James, it was pretty much a given that I could find “myself” in the display. Nevertheless, it was still fun to undertake the hunt and kind of exciting when I did locate my name.

Now, let’s counter that with what is going on these days out on the Internet.

I’ve noticed a real upswing lately in chatter about online identity and personal brand lately. There’s the upcoming launch of the .me domain extension next month, the continuing trend to establishing personal identity online through social networking sites like Facebook, MySpace and LinkedIn, and the ongoing growth of blogs and other forms of personal micro-publishing platforms like Twitter and Tumblr.

And just this week, it was revealed that computer maker Apple had purchased the domain name me.com and was rumoured to be rolling out a replacement for its .mac hosting and email service under the me.com domain.

But in contrast to the physical world, where that “James’ Mug” is widely available, online, james.com is long gone. Even koole.com was already registered by the time I checked to see if I could snag it a few years back. Imagine how the Smiths and Jones of the world feel.

In the physical world, when it comes to personalization, popularity breeds availability. The chances of finding a mug with an uncommon name on it? Zero. The same mug with Smith? 100%.

In the domain name space, the opposite holds true. The more common your name, the less likely it is that you’ll be able to own it as a domain.

It’s too bad, considering that name-based domains are especially compelling when you start thinking about the idea of rolling up all your various existences online, or building an online personal brand.

With that problem in mind, earlier this year we launched the Tucows Personal Names Service to our resellers through our wholesale channel.

Personal Names is built on the large portfolio of surname-based domain names that we own. Because we have control of that block of names, we can then turn around and offer up subdomains, effectively sharing these desirable surnames amongst many users.

It allows resellers to offer that “personalized mug” that users are after when they seek out a domain name. Imagine the thrill when they put their name in that search box expecting to get a “sorry, not available” message and instead are greeted with the invitation to “Buy it now!”

Try it out – you can search for your own name at our demo implementation.