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261021261021Toward Autopoiesis26F6DF오토포이에시스를 향해84A5EE차세대 디지털 브레인 만들기C24273261019261019261018261018디지털 시대의 언어 다양성을 위한 선언문507C2CManifesto for Linguistic Diversity in the Digital Age6B5B52261012261012코리지빌리티1CAB16261005261005261004261004Mesh EngineeringF27D1B그물망 엔지니어링881E3BThe devil is in the details94F308260923260923260919260919260917260917In the Agentic Era, should we become a dumb pipe?D815AC260916260916Coscientist6975BA260915260915Coscientific Swarm5F70E8협력적 연구 군체B9E26A
Indian Ocean, Somali, and Anguilla Domains

Indian Ocean, Somali, and Anguilla Domains

Notion started the .so trend... But why did it stick?

If you have a US startup called X and you don't have x.com, you should probably change your name.

This is not quite the case anymore. For example, it is common to find tools ending with .so TLD these days. It's a Somali domain, yet none of the tools are remotely close to Somalia. notion.so, amie.so, tally.so… But why and when did this start?

A ccTLD is a country code top-level domain used to identify a country or a sovereign state. .us for the United States, .uk for the United Kingdom, .de for Germany, .jp for Japan…

A gTLD is a generic top-level domain not tied to any specific country or region. .com for commercial entities, .org for organizations (typically non-profits), .edu for educational institutions…

Before understanding the .so domains, we must understand the domain markets. Any moderately technological company should have an online presence, and that made a gold rush to squat on domains indefinitely, waiting for a one-time moonshot. For example, the domain owner of Meta.com at least earned $60M from Facebook's rebranding.

Since that first .com squatting craze, tech companies have looked for other TLDs. Many used clever rhymes or symbolic meanings.

  • .ly (Libya). You can make it rhyme with adverbs, such as optimize.ly
  • .me (Montenegro). It sounds like "me" and is used for microblogs and personal websites.
  • .co (Colombia). Visually similar to "Co.," meaning corporates.

But .io (British Indian Ocean Territory) stuck the most, spawning over 500K small to medium tech businesses. Many grew big, like frame.io (2014, Acq. by Adobe), which at one point had 5% of the .io domains in Alexa's Top 1 Million, most of them tech companies. Google even started treating .io as a gTLD, a first-class domain like .com, and .io repeated .com history and flooded with squatters.

This is circa 2014-2015.

Notion launched in 2016. That was already too late to snatch a good .io, so they chose .so. While one Notion engineer claimed that they chose .so just because it was the only available one, people have speculated that it could be one of these.

  • Short for software.
  • Short for social.
  • Adverb. "Please do so. Please Notion so."

In the same comment, though, they said they planned to migrate to notion.com. Indeed, Notion had to go through many troubles with .so domain that it was a ccTLD from an unstable country where the corporate firewall blocked access to those Somali TLDs or websites going down because of the Somali government.

Even then, Notion's success created many Remora companies. Remoras are small fish that stick to a shark, sucking the trickled-down residues. A decently big tech company always spawns some remoras, and so did Notion. Notion's success initially created remora businesses, mainly focusing on what Notion lacks, which is creating fast, publicly available websites. These include but are not limited to the following.

  • super.so
  • bullet.so
  • potion.so

This is circa 2018-2019.

The success of Notion and its remora companies instated .so domain as the new .io domain, creating many blooming tech businesses.

  • screen.so
  • tally.so
  • amie.so

Nowadays .ai from Anguilla is the go-to for anything remotely close to artificial intelligence. You might have already guessed. It's now harder to keep AI out of the tech stack in 2024, so odds are your C-levels will want an .ai domain.

Arthur C. Clarke published a science fiction short story, "The Nine Billion Names of God." It revolves around a Tibetan lamasery (a monastery) and its centuries-long quest to list all the names of God. The lamas believe the Universe was created for this purpose and will end once all the names are written down. They calculated roughly nine billion such names (I won't spoil the rest).

But names are finite. There are only a handful of "memorable" names, and too many squatters, hence these hectic TLD migrations. The domain registration process is broken (see ), but that's a story for another day.

🧑🏻‍⚕️🧑🏻‍🎓🧑🏻‍🏫🧑🏻‍⚖️🧑🏻‍🌾🧑🏻‍🍳🧑🏻‍🔧🧑🏻‍🔬🧑🏻‍💻🧑🏻‍🎤🧑🏻‍🎨🧑🏻‍✈️🧑🏻‍🚀🧑🏻‍🚒👮🏻🕵🏻💂🏻👷🏻

Each industry has its unique clothing style, with either practical or historical reasons.

TLD is like business attire. It serves as a landmark of your industry.

  • .xyz for Web3
  • .ai for AI
  • .bio for Biotechs
  • .gg for games
  • .tv for media…

A new type of internet TLD culture is born from a broken domain registration infra. Limitations spawn creativity.

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