.ME - when, why, why and how?

You had an idea for a brilliant Internet service - and you took up its implementation? One of the first questions you will have is how to name it and which domain (brand) to use to promote it. If you are not going to go beyond Russia, it is better to look in the zone .РФ .RU. But if the idea walks on the subcortex that it will be necessary, sooner or later, it will go international, you can consider .ME.

Why not .COM you ask? It’s possible .COM - but over 180 million domain names have already been registered there and not every startup can afford the price in the first Internet zone.

.ME startedin 2008, and thanks to the intensive work of the Montenegrin registry, he managed to make himself known to the whole world. To reduce long links, Facebook, Wordpress, Vkontakte, Delicious, Time, and many other world giants use FB.ME, WP.ME, VK.ME, D.ME, TI.ME ...

Among the top sites you can find Demonoid.Me and About .Me. The first, by the way, switched to .ME with .COM running away from persecution by the US government.

Google does not treat .ME as a country code, but allows global positioning of sites. This significantly expands the horizons, as the ranking of search results will not be tied to google.ru, and from the point of view of SEO, it will work more efficiently around the world.

“Me” in English, depending on the context, means “I” / “me” / “me” / “me”. Marketers often use slogans such as “verb + me” (combinations with verbs, for example, join.me or present.me) or “noun + for + me / noun + 4 + me” (“noun” + “for me”) . Such tricks make users at a subconscious level associate with themselves, evoking egocentric thoughts and deepening the level of memorization of the advertised product.

That is why .ME does not need to take anything horrible, but one should consider the above combinations, as well as “adjective + me” (“me” + “adjective”, for example, the famous Hollywood movie Despicable.Me) and “my + noun + me” ( “My / mine / mine” + “noun” + “me” are a double challenge at the subconscious level, here the fact that the prefix “my” is itself the most importantpopular prefix in domain names).

Already in 2009, MyEducation.Me video was played on all channels in Canada:



In a recent study, it was noticed that if 5 years ago almost no company with the word “me” in its name used the .ME domain (since there simply weren’t any), then in 2012 the number of uses. ME domains rose to 25%. The figure below shows examples of .ME companies found on LinkedIn:



These statistics are a reason to think that with the release of new domain zones , this trend will only intensify.

As noted earlier, prices in the .ME zone are one order or even two lower than prices in other, older, zones. Where and how to buy .ME? The sweetest, of course, has already been dismantled. But do not give up prematurely. Through the registry website, you can easily find who owns a particular domain name. From personal experience, I can say that if you call by phone, the chances of getting a quick answer are 10 times higher than just writing by email.

The Montenegrin government itself has reserved many names. Several times a year, they throw out a package of excellent “premium” domains through Sedo or another broker. Current .ME Sedo Saleends on July 12th.

If you can convince the Montenegrins that you will make a world service, here is how Tony Conrad, who received About.Me just for free, you will have a jackpot. This can be done through a special development program .

Further, one could give a huge number of (domestic) examples of how various young companies use .ME (RocketStart.Me, LookAt.Me, ...). But this is probably a topic for another article. In the comments I will be happy to answer all your questions and share my personal experience (the company where I work already successfully uses several excellent domains in this zone).