One big reason is that if you're making a B2D product (business to developer), adding a .io to your name is pretty acceptable. See: segment.io, filepicker.io,

One big reason is that if you're making a B2D product (business to developer), adding a .io to your name is pretty acceptable. See: segment.io, filepicker.io, etc. These companies have adopted the ".io" as part of their company name, all in order to get a cheap domain. If you tried to buy a domain name like segment.com, that would be around $100k (ballpark). (Segment.com is probably not actually for sale, since an actual business is using it right now!)