poll Would you use .me for personal branding?

[abstractdomainer]

I've seen software developers use a lot of firstnameLastname.me for personal brand, using it to showcase their portfolio, the projects they have done, a complete repository perhaps.

How do you think .me is when compared to, say, firstnameLastname.com or say some other extension?
Also, would you prefer a .me over a .COM for personal branding?

 

[lock]

I would like to see extension for intended use as it will be tempting for most registering .dot me to register them as personal names all good. If dot us United States became just dot us and anyone could have one we might see it different in a few years.

 

[Macit]

I did not think of Dofo as an easy place to check registration stats, but although I use it every day, no not today for this. In fact I used https://domainnamestats.com/ for the information on Alexa 1M data. I went directly to Spamhaus, as I always do, for abuse stats.
...
Anyway, to briefly answer, I used the best available free data sources that I know about. It's what I like to do .

Bob, please accept this "extra" data from Dofo

There are;
3,410 .me websites in Alexa Top 1,000,000.
511 .me websites in Alexa Top 100,000.
46 .me websites in Alexa Top 10,000

According to our data, there are 960 thousand .me domains.
427,800 of them have a website.
107,500 .me domain names are parked.

57,000 .me domain names are for sale on marketplaces.

 

[Samer]

No

 

[lock]

yes

I still think with your name the dot com will be available. John Smith might need it.

 

[branding]

In my personal experience developers (personal brand) just go for whatever is available at reg fee and is somewhat known to the public, or the ccTLD.

I wouldn't use .me these days. co/io/dev is what you need if you want to be part of the cool kids club

 

[griff]

it was popular for devs to use firstlast.me back around ~2011. I had firstlast.me for many years, managed to get .com eventually from the owner though so moved to that.

some of the newer extensions like .dev and .codes are used nowadays - checking out the urls you see posted on hackernews will give you a taste of what's "in"

 

[uzver]

@Macit will probably provide you a complete answer, but some of it you can get easily from the extension setting at Dofo. e.g.
https://dofo.com/extensions/io

You can check dofo.com/extensions for some of the stats I gave.

Thanks to both of you!

Macit I think you should hire Bob as your brand ambassador

 

[lock]

Not unless i planned on taking over Montenegro. cc geo

 

[Josytal]

No.

 

[pb]

Yes, I would totally use pb.me if they didn't price it absurdly.

 

[uzver]

I personally think .me is dead. You’d be better of going for .io or .co if .com is not available.

I’ve chosen to use [email protected]... Until I won my firstname.net at GoDaddy auctions

 

[BrandCollectors.com]

no

 

[Bob Hawkes]

Regarding the stats that you've shown. Have you just googled it? Or perhaps pulled from dofo.com?

I did not think of Dofo as an easy place to check registration stats, but although I use it every day, no not today for this. In fact I used https://domainnamestats.com/ for the information on Alexa 1M data. I went directly to Spamhaus, as I always do, for abuse stats.

It's just my opinion, and I may as well be wrong. Surely enough, it's based on my interests and the websites I use (and domains I research).

Each person has their own impressions about how much a TLD is used or not. As you correctly note that depends on what our own personal interests are. I always find it better to go to broad data sources, rather than just my personal opinions. There are multiple ways to measure this and they each can be manipulated, of course. But I find it better to go to one of those, such as Alexa 1M, rather than to depend only on my own impressions.

when was the last time you came across a developed .me website?

Day before yesterday. A family member sent me his about.me page. And despite your comment I found no cat videos or Instagram pics . I am doing a Zoom meeting with him tomorrow and will suggest to him that I have domain friends who feel a .me should always have those! Not! I came across the Guard.me on a banner a couple of blocks from here on a walk. It was a week or two, but not long ago I used the rove.me site which has a nice section on my province, hoping by fall we will be able to take a nearby vacation. So yes I do see, and occasionally access, them. But my personal experience is one data point, as is yours.

In addition to Alexa 1M, one can use Cisco Umbrella stats to estimate traffic. When I checked for a blog post The Most Used Extensions: From Under the Cisco Umbrella .me was in 9th place, less popular than the big 3, or .co and .io but moreused globally than most country code extensions including some really well known ones, and all new extensions. Of course Cisco Umbrella brings its own set of potential biases as well.

Anyway, to briefly answer, I used the best available free data sources that I know about. It's what I like to do .

Bob

 

[Macit]

How can I check the same stats for .co, .io and .dev in Dofo?

You can check dofo.com/extensions for some of the stats I gave.

@Macit will probably provide you a complete answer, but some of it you can get easily from the extension setting at Dofo. e.g.
https://dofo.com/extensions/io

tells you there are 483k registrations in .io, of which 36k are for sale currently on marketplaces. It has a Global Rank of 52.

It also will show you the most popular sites in the extension, as well as registrar and country breakdown.

If you click on More Filters, you can limit sites with websites to get that data.

I too would like to know how you access the Alexa data from the various classes e.g. top 100k for an extension. I don't think I know how to do that.

Of course whether it is a good extension for a personal brand is a different one, although I agree related, to how many registrations, websites and popular corporate sites there are.

Bob

PS When Dofo give the Global Rank, @Macit, is that simply based on number of registrations, as opposed to the Cisco Global Rank? It seems so, I see .co is Global Rank 19, .me is 38 and .io is 52, but I think that is simply registration based.

@Bob Hawkes, Domain extension rank is simply based on domain registration count, nothing else

Unfortunately, we don't show the Alexa data on Dofo.com yet, but whenever you need any data related to domain names, we would be more than happy to provide.

We are tagging all domain names based on their usage:
* if it is resolved or not,
* if it is parked or not (by looking at the nameservers and we also check the content if it's a one-page parking page, etc.)
* if it is redirected to another domain name or not and so.

---

@abstractdomainer sorry if my messages seem out of topic

 

[uzver]

I never mentioned that i am developer. I'm just domainer...

because, you are thinking as a domainer.
If i want to develop something, then my first choice will be gtld or ngtls only.
for example, I will prefer cityname.city for development instead of cityname.com.
They looks decent to me.
Some times .live , .me, .im sounds better to me.

What a smart conversation we have here

 

[NickB]

The only one I would of considered for personal branding is.....

i am.me

which is already taken and forwards to....(I have no affiliation with this site)

https://www.juancarlos.live/

 

[thekiller]

.ME is a nice alternative to the .COM ones. I had my 4 letter firstname.ME in 2012 from Gandi.net when they were giving away free .ME domains. I tried to purchase first+last.COM but the seller asked $4000 for it, I ignored and got it in 2017 when it dropped and caught by namejet.com.

Long story short I love my first+last.COM and would be willing to .ME alternative if I hadn't have the .COM one.

 

[Chris Hydrick]

BobParsons used to...

https://web.archive.org/web/20090630191047/http://twitter.com/DrBobParsons

Though, the .COM is a 1998 registration, and the .ME is a 2008 registration.

 

[LUP]

BobParsons used to...

https://web.archive.org/web/20090630191047/http://twitter.com/DrBobParsons
Show attachment 156885

Though, the .COM is a 1998 registration, and the .ME is a 2008 registration.

because Godaddy is one of the 3 companies that founded .me

https://domain.me/me-as-a-company/

 

[Ritesh Chauhan]

yes

 

[Ritesh Chauhan]

I still think with your name the dot com will be available. John Smith might need it.

Different views. no worries...
Cheers..

 

[Bob Hawkes]

My thinking is perhaps dated by several decades , but even though using a domain name for something related to the extension is not required I think it is still wise.

Therefore, while a .com is great or almost essential for a commercial enterprise, and a .net for any kind of network can be super, and well I personally feel organizations should normally be on .org, I don't think any of those is a particularly good fit for something which indeed is a personal branding sort of site.

Does .me make sense for personal brands? Sure, it can, a meaningful match across the dot. Do you need to use a .me? No, of course not.

For those with a country specific approach in their personal branding, a country code may make sense.

If your personal branding is very much linked to what interests you or what your career is, then I agree that numerous new extensions, and a few general purpose country ones, may make sense. For example if your brand is as a YouTube social media influencer, .tv is a reasonable option. If your brand is basically in code development, .dev might make sense and I see a number of young developers using it for personal sites.

I have a half-finished article on the topic of personal brand domain name choices, which hopefully some month will see the light of day.

Thanks for starting the topic, @abstractdomainer, and to all who have contributed their own views.

Stay safe and have a good day everyone.

Bob

 

[uzver]

Does .me make sense for personal brands? Sure, it can, a meaningful match across the dot. Do you need to use a .me? No, of course not.

If you personal branding is very much linked to what interests you or what your career is, then I agree that numerous new extensions, and a few general purpose country ones, may make sense. For example if your brand is as a YouTube social media influencer, .tv is a reasonable option. If your brand is basically in code development, .dev might make sense and I see a number of young developers using it for personal sites.

I think .me is NOT a good fit for personal branding, unless your brand is who you are rather than what you are.

If all you want is to share your Instagram pictures, your family and pets — .me will do just fine. For a resume website is okay too. For everything else there are better alternatives.

 

[Bob Hawkes]

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.

I personally think .me is dead. You’d be better of going for .io or .co if .com is not available.

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 0.27 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 some use in the corporate world, such as the Li.me rebranding from their .com, or the use for of guard.me by a large international insurance company.

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 am I promoting it, or not, as a domain investment. This thread is about use as a personal brand site. I am just have trouble seeing in numbers the argument that it is not a TLD worth considering, along with others, for a personal brand.

Bob