
Exchanging a .COM for a .IO Digital Presence
From Slither.io to Clothes.io to CodePen.io to a growing list of personal and company brands, .io domains have become the darling domain of tech startups and domain investors.
The Internet country code top-level domain (ccTLD) for .io was originally assigned to the British Indian Ocean Territory before tech world dubbed it “input/output” domain for the next great tech idea.
There have been and are many tech startups using a .io domain to brand their digital presence.
I recently interviewed one such startup’s co-founder, Ryan Evans — a long-time serial entrepreneur and co-founder of a web analytics startup named Tend.io.
In my latest podcast episode, Ryan and I discuss the the following aspects and impact of building a .io digital presence:
- His early dabbling with investing in keyword and exact match domains
- The various ventures that lead to starting Tend
- Why Tend choose to use .io versus .com
- How Tend.io was a “steal-of-a-deal” purchase
So, press play and listen to Ryan share his journey about how Tend.io helps companies find more qualified customers. Thanks and that’s all for now!
I’m not sure it’d ever really be wise to actually switch from a .com to a .io, especially if all you’re running is a regular website, but I can definitely see how in some cases using a .io would be better than using a .com because of how catchy it can sound when you have a good domain name behind it. For example, you mentioned slither.io – it’s hard to explain why, but it’s so much more catchy and fun sounding than even “slither.com” would be.
It seems like .io has somehow more or less become the TLD of browser games and other sorts of web apps, so if you’re making something like that and can get your hands on a catchy sounding .io domain, you’re pretty much set.