Domain hack

A domain hack is a domain name that suggests a word, phrase, or name when concatenating two or more adjacent levels of that domain.[1][2][3] For example, "bir.ds" and "examp.le", using the fictitious country-code domains .ds and .le, suggest the words birds and example respectively. In this context, the word hack denotes a clever trick (as in programming), not an exploit or break-in (as in security).

Domain hacks offer the ability to produce short domain names. This makes them potentially valuable as redirectors, pastebins, base domains from which to delegate subdomains and URL shortening services.

History

On November 23, 1992, inter.net was registered.[4] In the 1990s, several hostnames ending in "pla.net" were active. The concept of spelling out a phrase with the parts of a hostname to form a domain hack became well established.[5] On Friday, May 3, 2002, icio.us was registered to create del.icio.us. Delicious would later gain control of the delicio.us domain, which had been parked since April 24, 2002, the day the .us ccTLD (country code top-level domain) was opened to second-level registrations.

Who.is[6] is a whois lookup service, indicating the registered ownership information of a domain. It was established June 12, 2002 and registered to an address in Reykjavík, Iceland.

On January 14, 2004, the Christmas Island Internet Administration revoked .cx domain registration for shock site goatse.cx, a domain which used "se.cx" to form the word "sex".[7] The domain was originally registered in 1999. Similar names had been used for parody sites such as oralse.cx or analse.cx; in some cases, .cz (Czech Republic) or .kz (Kazakhstan) are substituted for .cx.

The term domain hack was coined by Matthew Doucette on November 3, 2004 to mean "an unconventional domain name that uses parts other than the SLD (second level domain) or third level domain to create the title of the domain name."[8]

Yahoo! acquired blo.gs[9] on June 14, 2005, and del.icio.us[10] on December 9, 2005.

On September 11, 2007, name servers for .me were delegated by IANA to the Government of Montenegro, with a two-year transition period for existing .yu names to be transferred to .me. One of the first steps taken in deploying .me online was to create .its.me as a domain space for personal sites.[11] Many potential domain hacks, such as love.me and buy.me,[12] were held back by the registry as premium names for later auction. One .me domain hack example is please.do.not.disturb.me.

On December 15, 2009 Google launched its own URL shortener under the domain goo.gl using the ccTLD of Greenland. YouTube subsequently launched youtu.be[13] using the ccTLD of Belgium. In 2015 Google used the domain hack abc.xyz for their newly launched Alphabet Inc..

Working with Bit.ly, the New York Times launched an URL shortener in late 2009 under the domain nyti.ms using the ccTLD of Montserrat. The need to serve shorter URLs for Twitter was cited as a reason for the shortener.[14]

In March 2010, National Public Radio launched its own URL shortener under the domain n.pr using the ccTLD of Puerto Rico.[15] The n.pr domain is currently used to link to an NPR story page by its ID and is one of the shortest possible domain hacks.

In late 2010, Apple launched a URL shortener at the domain itun.es, using the ccTLD of Spain, in a similar move to Google's goo.gl. Unlike goo.gl, which is public and can be used for any web address, itun.es is used only for iTunes Ping URL shortening.

Spotify also uses the URL Shortener spoti.fi, using the ccTLD of Finland, to link to artist, partners, playlists, albums and songs.

Flickr uses flic.kr with .kr being the ccTLD of South Korea.

International names

In most cases, registration of these short domain names relies on the use of country code top-level domains (ccTLDs), each of which has a unique two-letter identifier.

For example, blo.gs makes use of the ccTLD .gs (South Georgia and the South Sandwich Islands) to spell "blogs", fa.st makes use of the ccTLD .st (São Tomé and Príncipe) to spell "fast", every.one uses the .one gTLD to spell "everyone", Instagr.am makes use of the ccTLD .am (Armenia) to spell the name of photo-sharing service "Instagram", helpmelearn.it makes use of the ccTLD .it (Italy) to spell "help me learn it" and darkvir.us uses ccTLD .us (United States) and sharing it for subdomains with free hosting, Cityne.ws makes use of the ccTLD .ws (West Samoa) to spell the name of Italian newspaper "Citynews", tel.ly uses ccTLD .ly (Libya) to spell "telly" (a popular British colloquial term for television), and some of Danbooru-style imageboards that end their name with '-booru' suffix may use the ccTLD .ru (Russia) to spell their own name.

The third-level domains del.icio.us, cr.yp.to and e.xplo.it make use of the SLDs icio.us, yp.to and xplo.it from the ccTLDs .us (United States), .to (Tonga) and .it (Italy) to spell "delicious", "crypto" and "exploit" respectively.

In some cases, an entire ccTLD has been re-purposed in its international marketing, such as .am (Armenia), .fm (Federated States of Micronesia), .cd (Democratic Republic of the Congo), .dj (Djibouti), and .tv (Tuvalu) for sites delivering various forms of audiovisual content.

Libya's ccTLD (.ly) has been used for English words that end with suffix "ly", such as sil.ly. Popular URL shortening services bit.ly, brief.ly, name.ly and ow.ly use this hack. In 2010, Libyan registry suspended an adult oriented .ly link shortener.[16]

Further information: ccTLD § Unconventional usage

Other languages

In Germany, Austria, and Switzerland the domain .ag for Antigua and Barbuda is used by corporations in the legal form of Aktiengesellschaft (commonly abbreviated as AG).

The American Samoa domain .as is popular in countries where AS, A/S (or ⅍) (Aktieselskab/Aksjeselskap) is the legal suffix for stock-based corporations in Denmark and Norway, so companies of those countries often use it. The "a. s." (akciová společnost/akciová spoločnosť) is also abbreviation for Czech or Slovak stock-based company, but those countries usually don't use it. Neither do Estonian stock-based companies (Aktsiaselts).

Some organisations situated in Switzerland use TLDs to specifically refer to their canton (such as the Belgian TLD .be for the Canton of Berne).

In a similar way some organizations in the German state of Schleswig-Holstein use the .sh TLD from Saint Helena.

In Turkish, "biz" means "we", and can be used for emphasis at the end of "we are" sentences.

Family names in many Slavic languages written in internationalized variant end with ch (i.e. -ich, -vich, -vych, -ovich). This ch comes from Slavic "ć", "č", "ч", or "ћ". Therefore, the Swiss .ch ccTLD is an option. Another use case of .ch is for English words that end in ch, e.g. tech, punch, search, crunch, rich. Examples of such domains are codesear.ch, freshte.ch, and swit.ch.

Since the introduction of .eu domains (eu meaning "I" in Romanian, Galician and Portuguese), these domains have become popular in Romania, with people registering their names with the .eu extension.

In French, Italian and Portuguese, là or lá mean "there". As the .la domain (Laos) is available for second-level registration worldwide, this can be an easy way to get a short, catchy name such as "go there". In Italy some TLDs are identical to Italian Provinces' identifier, such as .to (Turin) or .tv (Treviso) and are thus extensively used for web domains in the area. The Canadian domain .ca is also trivial to use as cá or cà ("here"), respectively in Portuguese and Neapolitan, or ça ("that"), in French; however, unlike some countries, Canada's .ca registrar requires local Canadian presence to use this domain.

Hungarian domains sometimes use the Moroccan top level domain .ma (meaning "today"). The Moldovan domain, .md, is used by doctors and medical companies, such as doctors.md, after a legal fight to allow such usage outside of Moldova.[17]

A fad amongst French-speakers was to register their names in the Niue TLD .nu, which in French and Portuguese means "nude" or "naked"; however, as of 2007, Niue authorities have revoked many of these domain names. The handful that remain are joke domains without actual nudity. French speakers often use the Jersey TLD .je, since "je" means "I" in French. In addition, .je is used in the Netherlands, as it can mean both "you" or "your", and "small", since the addition of -je to most nouns produces a diminutive form (e.g. huis.je, or the defunct iPhone app feest.je (feestje meaning "party").[18]

Likewise, Dutch, Swedish, and Danish speakers sometimes use .nu, because it means "now" in these languages. The TLD is still used by many Swedish sites, as prior to 2003 it was impossible for individuals (and difficult for organizations) to register arbitrary domains under the .se TLD.

English words that end with the "rs" letters (cars, fixers, powers... etc.) provide means for another popular domain hack which utilizes the Serbian .RS domain extension.

In Russian, net (as нет, or nyet transliterated character for character) means "no" or "there isn't," so there are many domains in the format something.net (e.g. redaktora.net meaning "[there is] no editor"). There are many words ending with ga (Cyrillic: га), including some highly popular (книга/kniga meaning book, дорога/doroga meaning road). Gabon's .ga domain is free for registration, which has led to wide adoption of such domain hacks.

In Czech, Polish and Slovak, to means "it", so there are many domains using Tonga's .to in the format "do-something.to" (e.g., zrobie.to, meaning "I will do it" in the Polish language or prestahujeme.to meaning "We will move it" as Slovak moving service). Notably, Czech file sharing service uloz.to was founded in 2007, and its name "ulož to" means "save it".

In Slovenian, si is a dative form of the reciprocal personal pronoun and a second person form of the verb to be. As .si is a Slovenian ccTLD, domain hacks are abundant. Additionally, the domain is attractive to speakers of Romance languages, because it is a conjunction, pronoun or an affirmative interjection in many. ARNES limits the use of the domain to residents and entities of Slovenia.

In Spanish and Portuguese, ar is the ending of the infinitive of many verbs, so hacks with Argentina's TLD .ar are common (e.g., educ.ar, meaning "to educate"). Similarly, another such verb suffix is ir, TLD of Iran.

One of the earliest commercial ISPs in Finland used the domain sci.fi — a reference to science fiction.

In Latin, many second-declension nouns in the nominative singular case end in the suffix -us, which is echoed in the TLD .us. So it is possible to create Latin-word domain names, such as obscur.us, which resembles the Latin word obscurus, which means dark, obscure, or unknown.

Some registries allow Emoji in domains, permitting the creation of emoji domains. Many browsers display these domains as punycode for security reasons.

With the rise of new TLDs, some companies have registered entire TLDs in order to create a hack for their name. Most prominent is .gle, created for Google to be used as goo.gle.

See also

References
  1. "Domain Hacks & Email Hacks". xona.com.
  2. "Domain Hacks = Fun Domain Name Opportunities". Dynadot.
  3. "Startup Domain FAQ – Should I Use A Domain Hack?". morganlinton.com. July 16, 2013.
  4. "inter.net WHOIS record". Whois domain search.
  5. "List of coolest hostnames and domain hacks circa 1995". Linuxmafia.com. Retrieved February 23, 2013.
  6. "WHOIS Search, Domain Name, Website, and IP Tools". who.is.
  7. "Acceptable Use Policy .cx - Christmas Island". Council of Country Code Administrators. Archived from the original on October 21, 2008.
  8. "Domain Hacks Information".
  9. Winstead, Jim (June 14, 2005). "blo.gs: sold". Archived from the original on March 9, 2009.
  10. Schachter, Joshua (December 9, 2005). "y.ah.oo!". delicious blog. Archived from the original on September 3, 2011. Retrieved October 2, 2013.
  11. "Montenegro .me tld to attract interest for domain hacks". Dnxpert.com. November 8, 2007. Retrieved February 23, 2013.
  12. "Going Once, Going Twice – Top .ME Names Up For Bid". Domain.ME. September 22, 2008. Archived from the original on August 25, 2009. Retrieved October 2, 2013.
  13. "Make Way for youtu.be Links". Youtube Official Blog. Retrieved August 9, 2014.
  14. Wortham, Jenna (December 16, 2009). "The Times and Bit.ly Roll Out 'nyti.ms' Short Links". New York Times "Bits" Blog. New York City, New Yorkurl=https://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/12/16/the-times-and-bitly-roll-out-nytims-short-links/.CS1 maint: location (link)
  15. Andy Carvin, Daniel Jacobson and Jon Foreman. "You Say NPR, But On Twitter We Say n.pr". Npr.org. Retrieved February 23, 2013.
  16. Horn, Leslie (October 6, 2010). "Libya Seizes URL Shortener Vb.ly". PC Magazine.
  17. Norbut, Mike (January 17, 2005). "New company makes push for ".md" domain". American Medical News. Retrieved May 21, 2015.
  18. Oosterveer, Danny (April 9, 2012). "Feest.je gooit handdoek in de ring". marketingfacts.nl. Retrieved May 21, 2015.
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