I’ve long been amused by the marketing of country top-level domains for other purposes — recently, I saw an ad for domains using the .me extension (Actual ad slogan: “It’s all about .me”). Pretty funny, if you know what’s really going on.
Turns out, it’s not about me. It’s about Montenegro.
Here’s the deal: In the history of the Web, a decision was made that each county would have a top-level domain — hence, Mexico is .mx, United Kingdom is .uk, and China is .cn. (These are referred to as Country Code Top-Level Domains or ccTLDs, in case you want to amaze your friends at parties…)
Sounds good, but somewhere along the line the tiny island of Tuvalu got a bright idea: let’s open our .tv domain to people outside our country — say, television stations everywhere… Other non-country uses of ccTLDs have been attempted — for ad agencies, .ad (Andorra);Â for agricultural agencies, .ag (Antigua);Â for Los Angeles, .la (Laos). Once you know the real meaning of these domains, it’s kinda funny.
Which brings us, finally, to the .me domain. Technically, it represents Montenegro, but having finally declared its independence from .yu (originally Yugoslavia, but more recently Serbia & Montenegro), .me is stretching its legs. Since mid-July 2008, the ccTLD is available to Narcissists everywhere, which means everyone can have a piece of .me.
Go on, make a joke. It’s fun.
