.ME — when, why, why, and how?

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

Why not .COM you ask? It is possible and .COM - but more than 180 million domain names have already been registered there and not every startup can afford the prices in the first Internet zone.

.ME started in 2008, and thanks to the intensive work of the Montenegrin registry, I managed to declare myself 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 ...
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Among the top sites you can find Demonoid.Me and About.Me. The first, by the way, switched to .ME from .COM while fleeing persecution by the US government.

Google treats .ME not as a country code, but allows global site positioning. This significantly expands the horizons, since the ranking of search results will not be tied to google.com, and from an SEO point of view, it will work more efficiently all over the world.

“Me” in English, depending on the context, means “I” / “me” / “me” / “me”. Marketers often use slogans like “verb + me” (combinations with verbs, for example, join.me or present.me) or “noun + for + me / noun + 4 + me” (“noun” + “for me”) . Such tricks force users at the subconscious level to make an association 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, but the above combinations should be considered, as well as “adjective + me” (“me” + “adjective”, for example, the famous Hollywood film Despicable.Me) and “my + noun + me” ( “My / my / my” + “noun” + “I” is a double challenge at the subconscious level, the fact that the prefix “my” is the most popular prefix in domain names plays an important role here).

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



In a recent study, it was noted that if 5 years ago almost no company, in the title of which was the word “me”, used the .ME domain (as there were simply no such companies), then in 2012 the number of uses. ME domains increased to 25%. The figure below shows examples of the “.ME” companies found on LinkedIn:



This statistic is a reason to think that with the release of new domain zones , this trend will only increase.

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, already dismantled. But do not give up prematurely. Through the registry site you can easily find out who owns a specific 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 an email.

Many names are reserved by the Montenegrin government itself. Several times a year, they throw out a package of excellent “premium” domains through Sedo or another broker. The current .ME sale on Sedo ends on July 12th.

If you can convince Montenegrins about what the world service will do, this is how Tony Conrad, who got About.Me, is just for free - you will have a jackpot. This can be done through a special developer program .

Then one could cite 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).