Montenegro is a name that means “black mountain” in many Romance languages. The native name for the place is Crna Gora. The black mountain referenced in these names is Lov?en. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
After you’ve found the guts to start your own venture, have assembled the right team, and have an initial product, you start brainstorming company names. As you’re brainstorming company names, you cross them with available domain names. You quickly realize the only decent length “.com”s left are “apsoif.com”. Sadly, even if you can figure out how to pronounce that, there’s no way your customer is going to remember it.
Then came the great country of Montenegro, meaning black mountain.
Montenegro, in Southeastern Europe, has a population a little over 600,000 and a GDP of $7 billion.
The .me code was assigned to Montenegro in 2006, and domains made available to the public in 2008. Since then, US startups have flocked to “.me”s. Why? Well, first off, they’re available. Second, if you have the choice between “.am”, “.ag.”, “.ws” and other similar names, you’re going to choose the one that actually means something in English. Third, the “.me” has a personalized feel. You can connect with the user.
We chose to use a .me – and ended up with ZipFit.me. The negative is that sometimes customers still go to zipfitme.com – but we luckily snatched up that name, too.
Many other startups, even in Chicago, have used the .me naming convention. A few cool ones are:
1. Brideside.me – Bridesmaid dress startup out of Chicago
2. Meet.me – Dating/meetup site
3. Tap.me – Advertising gaming site
4. Outgrow.me – Place to discover successfully funded Kickstarter IndieGoGo projects
5. Hoot.me – Connect with classmates and tutors
6. Bazaart.me – Become a fashionista through Pinterest
7. Tango.Me – Tango is a video calling service
8. Sonar.Me – App that tells you when your friends and friends’ friends are nearby
9. Homescreen.Me – App that lets you share your iOS devices’ homescreens
10. Join.Me – Instant screen sharing app
What I personally find entertaining is that the number of registered domains in Montenegro exceeds the size of Montenegro itself. As of July 1, 2012, Montenegro had close to 644,000 registered domains according to HosterStats.com.
Thank you, Montenegro.
Thank you to GoDaddy for providing information regarding domain usage and references:
http://www.hosterstats.com/DomainNameCounts2012.php
http://www.domain.me/blog/me-the-fastest-growing-domain-name-in-europe-5023
https://www.centr.org/DomainWire_Stat_Report_2012_1
About .ME:
The .ME Registry was chosen by the government of Montenegro to operate the new .ME domain name extension. .ME Registry partners include ME-net, GoDaddy.com and Afilias Limited. Me-Net is a Montenegrin registrar and its founders are leaders of the ICT sector in Montenegro, who among other things participated in a successful privatization of Montenegrin largest ISP. GoDaddy.comis located in the USA and is the world’s largest Web hosting, domain name registrations and new SSL certificates. Afilias Limited is headquartered in Ireland and is a leading registry services provider.
Article source: http://www.forbes.com/sites/zipfitme/2012/08/09/an-easy-fix-to-the-domain-name-problem/. Creative Commons (CC)
