I think what happened to the popularity of .io domains could.. maybe.. be called a fad. I think that doesn't dig deep enough. It came on the scene and was popul

I think what happened to the popularity of .io domains could.. maybe.. be called a fad. I think that doesn't dig deep enough. It came on the scene and was popular with technical services and startups because it sounded techy and cool and short names were available. When I did personal research about domain names I found people in the US are familiar with .com first, .org second, and everything else is a distant 3rd. While I'm cherry-picking an old quote from a PG essay [1], the stat he provides is pretty interesting. It really drives home how important owning a .com is for easy discoverability of your online presence. All of this is in addition to the ethical and security issues the posted above listed. Quote > 100% of the top 20 YC companies by valuation have the .com of their name. 94% of the top 50 do. But only 66% of companies in the current batch have the .com of their name. Which suggests there are lessons ahead for most of the rest, one way or another. [1] http://www.paulgraham.com/name.html http://www.paulgraham.com/name.html