It seems in the thread there is, not surprising, some difference in opinion about what a personal brand is. I found
this explanation helpful. Perhaps others will too.
"What is Your Personal Brand?
Your personal brand is how you promote yourself. It is the unique combination of skills, experience, and personality that you want the world to see you. It is the telling of your story, and how it reflects your conduct, behavior, spoken and unspoken words, and attitudes. You use your personal branding to differentiate yourself from other people."
I was wondering if you wanted to expand your thinking on the following a bit? It doesn't seem dead to me, in 2010 it had 320,000 regs, now about 1,150,000, a decent growth in 10 years, more than domains in general over same period.
It currently has about 2960 sites in Alexa 1M, yes, less than
.io
and
.co
by about a factor of 2, but not bad for a TLD that first and foremost promotes itself for personal sites. I also checked abuse using
Spamhaus stats, and at 4% 'bad' and a badness score of .27 it is very good, substantially better than any of the big three legacy TLDs or
.info
.
The TLD is used by probably the biggest name in personal branding services
about.me
. I think this is significant if you are moving your personal brand from a free about.me listing to your own personal brand site.
Of course the TLD has also found use in the corporate world, such as the
Li.me
rebranding from their
.com
.
Why is the extension dead if people keep using it in increasing numbers for what it is meant to be used for?
I disagree with those who see a certain ordering of TLD priority, independent of use, but recognize the right of those who do view the domain world that way. For example, I totally see why
.io
is popular among domain investors, despite the highish renewal costs. The sell-through rate is excellent in the TLD, making it a great domain investment in many cases. But
.io
does not strike me as a natural choice as a
personal brand TLD, unless you are a tech developer or tech startup owner, possibly. I have a bunch of
.co
domains in my portfolio, but the extension does not strike me as a good match for personal branding.
Just to be clear, I have no association with
.me
nor promoting it, or not, regarding domain investment. This thread is about for use as a
personal brand site. From time to time I register a few
.me
, but it is a very small part of my portfolio. I amjust have trouble seeing in numbers the argument that it is not a TLD worth considering, along with others, for a personal brand.
Bob