D for Del.icio.us
Del.icio.us, the leading bookmarking service, was the first big, really big domain hack. Many things happen to a cherry company and its name. It changed to delicous.com some time ago.
Recently, it was sold to AVOS, an Internet company, led by the founders of YouTube, Chad Hurley and Steve Chen. Previously, they co-founded YouTube, the world's largest video site in 2005, which was acquired by Google 18 months later for US$ 1.7 billion. Hurley and Chen were early employees at PayPal, a leading online payment service which is now part of eBay. The guys in San Mateo, California must know something about the Internet business.
A good name, good cash and good managers are not enough these days. Great companies also need ultrashort domain names. Many have already secured XX.yy combinations, though this seems not to be enough. Now we are talking about one letter domain names, or four characters in total - the shortest addresses possible so far.
A quick scan in whois records for most suitable candidates to be D.CO, D.LY and D.ME revealed the following:
Domain Name D.CO
...
Registrant Name Restricted and Reserved names .COInternet
Registrant Organization .CO Internet S.A.S.
Registrant Address1 Calle 100# 8a-49 Torre B Oficina 507
Registrant City Bogota
Registrant Postal Code 0000
Registrant Country Colombia
Registrant Country Code CO
Registrant Phone Number +571.6169916
Registrant Email premium@cointernet.co
Domain Name: d.ly [updated in 2013-03 was owned by Canadian Skyblue Networks Inc.]
...
digisocial, inc
Benjamin Gifford
8 Faneuil Hall Market Place Floor 3
Boston
MA
United States
Zip/Postal code: 2109
Phone: 6462331147
b.gifford@digisocial.comDomain Name:D.ME
...
Registrant Name:Domain Admin
Registrant Organization:AVOS Systems, Inc.
Registrant Address:PO Box 1791
Registrant Address2:
Registrant Address3:
Registrant City:San Mateo
Registrant State/Province:CA
Registrant Country/Economy:US
Registrant Postal Code:94401
Registrant Phone:+1.6503443292
Registrant Phone Ext.:
Registrant FAX:+1.6503443065
Registrant FAX Ext.:
Registrant E-mail:dnsadmin@avos.com
Now guess what, d.co is still with the registry, d.ly is a password protected site, and d.me though still resolving to the registry parking page belongs to AVOS. You may guess which one will it be.
All references: [1 - 5]
Short link: Copy - http://links2.me/~aer2$XJ
August 7th, 2011 at 2:09 am
Did you know that one can always open top 10 links of today at delicious with this link:
http://apicall.feed2tabs.com/?f=http%3A%2F%2Fdelicious.com%2F&fn=10
August 15th, 2011 at 9:17 pm
In its turn, Google decided to acquire android.me: http://links2.me/google.into.mobile/2/