Domain hack

A domain hack (sometimes known as a domain name hack) is an unconventional domain name that combines domain levels, especially the top-level domain (TLD), to spell out the full "name" or title of the domain.[1] Well-known examples include blo.gs, del.icio.us, and cr.yp.to.

In this context, the "hack" represents a trick (as in programming), not an exploit or break-in (as in security).

Domains such as .as, .it, .me, or .us are easy to use as domain hacks because they correspond to short, simple dictionary words. Alternatively, a name is chosen so that the last few characters match an existing top-level domain, such as "inter.net", so that every character is used in forming the common name.

Domain hacks offer the ability to produce extremely short domain names. For example, blo.gs has a total of only five letters (versus blogs.com, at eight letters), as every letter is taken into account as the site's title.

This makes them potentially valuable as redirectors (like i.am, which redirects to FortuneCity's V3 service), as pastebins and as base domains from which to delegate subdomains.

International names

In many cases, registration of these short domain names relies on the use of country code domains, each of which has a unique two-letter identifier.

For example, blo.gs makes use of the TLD .gs (South Georgia and the South Sandwich Islands) to spell "blogs", chronolo.gy uses the TLD .gy (Guyana) to spell "chronology", and tel.ly uses the TLD .ly (Libya) to spell "telly" (a popular British slang term for television).

The third-level domains del.icio.us and cr.yp.to make use of the SLDs icio.us and yp.to from the TLDs .us (United States) and .to (Tonga) to spell "delicious" and "crypto" respectively.

In some cases, an entire country code domain has been re-purposed in its international marketing, such as .am, .fm, .ly, .cd, .dj, and .tv for sites delivering various forms of audiovisual content.
[edit] History

On November 23, 1992, inter.net was registered.[2] In the 1990s, several hostnames ending in "pla.net" were active. The concept of spelling out a phrase with the parts of a hostname to form a domain hack is well established.[3] On Friday, May 3, 2002, icio.us was registered to create del.icio.us.

Who.is is a whois server, indicating the registered ownership information of a domain. It was established June 12, 2002 and registered to an address in Reykjavík, Iceland.

On January 14, 2004, the Christmas Island Internet Administration revoked .cx domain registration for shock site Goatse.cx, a domain which used "se.cx" to form the word "sex".[4] The domain was originally registered in 1999. Similar names had been used for parody sites such as oralse.cx or analse.cx; in some cases, .cz (Czech Republic) or .kz (Kazakhstan) are substituted for .cx.

The term domain hack was coined by Matthew Doucette on November 3, 2004 to mean "an unconventional domain name that uses parts other than the SLD (second level domain) or third level domain to create the title of the domain name."[5]

Yahoo! acquired blo.gs[6] on June 14, 2005, and del.icio.us[7] on December 9, 2005.

On 11 September 2007, name servers for .me were delegated by IANA to the Government of Montenegro, with a two-year transition period for existing .yu names to be transferred to .me. One of the first steps taken in deploying .me online was to create .its.me as a domain space for personal sites.[8] Many desirable domain hacks, such as love.me or leave.me,[9] were held back by the registry as premium names for later auction.

In January 2008, Matt Mullenweg changed his popular photomatt.net domain to ma.tt.[10]

On December 15th 2009 Google launched its own URL shortener under the domain goo.gl using the country code top-level domain (ccTLD) of Greenland.
[edit] Other languages

A fad amongst French-speakers was to register their names in the Niue TLD .nu, which in French and Portuguese means "nude" or "naked"; however, as of 2007[update], Niue authorities have revoked many of these domain names. The handful that remain are joke domains without actual nudity. Likewise, Dutch, Swedish, and Danish speakers sometimes use .nu, because it means "now" in these languages.

Some organisations situated in Switzerland use TLDs to specifically refer to their canton (like the Belgian TLD .be for the Canton of Berne).

The American Samoa domain .as is popular in the handful of countries where A/S is the legal suffix for corporations. Likewise, Hungarian domains sometimes use the Moroccan top level domain .ma (meaning "today").

In Russian, net (as «nyet») means "no", so there are many domains in the format "something.net". A similar use of .info (in many languages where the term signifies "information") is to use a negatory term and .info to yield local equivalents to "there is no information". In Czech, Polish and Slovak, to means "it", so there are many domains using Tonga's .to in the format "do-something.to" (e.g., zrobie.to, meaning "I will do it" the Polish language).

In French, Italian and Portuguese, « là » or « lá » mean "there". As the .la domain (Laos) is available for second-level registration worldwide, this can be an easy way to get a short, catchy name like "go there". In Italy some TLDs are identical to italian Provinces' identifier, such as .to (Turin) or .tv (Treviso) and are thus extensively used for web domains in the area. The Canadian domain .ca is also trivial to use as « cá » ("here") in Portuguese or « ça » ("that") in Canadian French; local Canadian presence is required.

Since the introduction of .eu domains (eu meaning "I" in Romanian and in Portuguese), these domains have become popular in Romania, with people registering their names with the .eu extension.

source:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Domain_hack

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