WP.me
Although they do not allow registration of .me names shorter than three letters, with the help of GoDaddy, Matthew Mullenweg of WordPress managed to strike a deal with the registry and on 24 July 2009 he got his hands on WP.me. WordPress.me was registered by the same famous Ma.tt already back in 2008 during the land rush period (10 July 2008 to be precise), though the latter is still kept unproductive.
Earlier this year, Automattic, Matthew's company, also acquired WP.com from Yahoo!. There were many discussions of how to better use it - for the moment it just redirects to the main site.
The idea of WP.me is to provide short URLs, like http://wp.me/sf2B5-shorten, for WordPress users only to be used @twitter-like services.
According to Matthew (our test conclusions are in italic):
- WP.me is the only two-letter .me domain in the world.
Not true. There is also co.me and ac.me dedicated to commercial and educational organisations in Montenegro.
- Every blog and post on WordPress.com has a WP.me URL now.
True. It is better to say: "every blog can get a WP.me URL now". It can be done through a "Get Shortlink" button next to the "permalink" in the WordPress editor. Though, true, the links are generated for every entry, even for the old ones.
- These are all exposed in the <head> using rel=shortlink.
True. E.g., http://matt.wordpress.com/2009/08/13/a5-wagyu/ is also linked as http://wp.me/p4-51.
- It doesn’t work for any URL in the world, just WP.com-hosted ones.
True.
- The links are permanent, they will work as long as WordPress.com is around.
True. The question for how long will WordPress be around? Probably for another decade at least. According to Alexa, this site is a high riser and just made it into their global top 20 list.
- WP.me is spam-free, because we are constantly monitoring and removing spam from WP.com.
Maybe. As Akismet doing good job, one can probably trust Automattic guys.
Now WordPress should team up with GoDaddy and allow its premium users to register sites like Berlin.its.me or MyName.Me so that they can run their fancy professional and personal blogs too.
All references: [1 - 5]
Short link:
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Copy - http://links2.me/~Ger2$IE
August 16th, 2009 at 6:24 am
Last December Matthew also purchased two hacks gir.ly and late.ly [source http://dot-me.of-cour.se/2008/12/15/lately-etc/%5D
One can only wonder what plans does he have for those two.
August 16th, 2009 at 7:00 am
The only issue with “shortlink” is that no search engine will index it: http://ggl.me/?q=site:wp.me
Thus, no search traffic, alas.
August 16th, 2009 at 7:44 am
Surprising.ly, although, wp4.me is already taken, w-p.me is still available for grab. Any one interested? I bet it will be gone by Monday.
WP.me real.ly made it into the news. Hundred thousands of articles are quoting it, all in just one day: http://ggl.me/?cx=partner-pub-5816982472509591%3Atq298a-da3u&cof=FORID%3A10&ie=UTF-8&q=%22wp.me%22&sa=Search#910
August 16th, 2009 at 7:54 am
The true question to ask is whether or not Twitter will embed wp.me links or keep using bit.ly ones.
August 16th, 2009 at 9:28 am
While I was still thinking whether or not to buy w-p.me over the breakfast, it was gone in no time:
* Domain Create Date: 16-Aug-2009 09:19:05 UTC
Good news travel pretty quick.ly.
August 19th, 2009 at 3:10 am
WP.me is a good start. It give us an idea how much .ME registry will expect for two-letter domains.
No doubts, this is big players’ zone.
September 9th, 2009 at 5:31 pm
And now goes the official .ME release about this subject: http://domain.me/news.php?&news=179
Funny enough, they have forgotten about co.me – the first official two-letter.me
October 25th, 2009 at 9:14 am
[…] numerous partnership on premium .me names, say about.me, fax.me, etcetera. Just like that did with wp.me. All you need is to convince our Montenegrin friends that you are able to build a significant […]
December 14th, 2009 at 9:16 pm
[…] We wrote earlier this summer about WordPress, an ultimate blogging platform, which by the way drives this site, launching its own URL shortener based on wp.me. […]
March 10th, 2011 at 10:10 am
In addition to WP.Me, WordPress is also using JetPack.Me
March 25th, 2011 at 6:21 pm
Many WP plugins use .me sites too, jetpack.me, baye.me… http://brief.ly/~1Cw