
No to .io, Yes to .xyz - todsacerdoti
https://yarmo.eu/blog/no-io-yes-xyz
======
kristopolous
Site seems to be down but xyz gave a domain away to my company if we did some
promotional things I really didn't care about (using their domain essentially
everywhere, including the code base so it'd be api.[domain...], they actually
did check this).

My boss wanted it but I mostly ignored it, too many _actual_ things to do. Xyz
was pretty aggressive, multiple emails a week, we never satisfied 100% of
their needs. We used it on business cards, wrote a blog entry, advertised them
for free, made it the primary domain, it was never enough. It was one of those
high maintenance b2b partnerships where you're thinking "ug, screw these
people"

So we let the domain lapse after I finally convinced him it was a complete
non-priority and then they followed up to with renewal offers in the thousands
of dollars that we had no intention of spending, almost as if they were trying
to play hardball on something I didn't actual want.

I have their emails on a filter, I'll go find the last one they sent. Ah, may
1 2019. This one person always used a smiley face in her subject line even
when writing some thinly veiled threatening email telling us to do stuff, it
was fun.

They appear to be yet another snake in the game which is fine but it taints
every pro-xyz thing I see since I know they have account managers that dictate
and follow-up on astroturfed PR campaigns.

I'm also violating their NDA by disclosing this but that was my (now ex) boss
who signed that paper, I'm in the clear.

------
throwaway4666
Having had an xyz domain name I have to warn people that many mail servers
will automatically think you're a spammer if you send email with it. No idea
why.

~~~
johnklos
Here's why: they sold for cheap / gave away registrations for next to nothing
with no vetting process, so .xyz was the go-to domain for spam and phishing
for quite a long time after it was introduced.

Some of us (email administrators) have only recently started allowing .xyz
email. It really was that bad.

~~~
lstodd
If you're serious about a "vetting process" for domain registration, you
haven't had anything to do with email admin for last 20 years.

~~~
tomrod
I don't normally chime in on comments like this, but I just have to say: what
are you talking about? If 99.9999% of traffic from a domain is spam,it makes
complete sense to block it as spam.

~~~
lstodd
Yes, but that is in no way limited to .xyz It was the the same with .info in
2001/2002 and .biz and whatever else.

The point was that there never was any "vetting" ever. Bulk-buy, spam,
abandon. That's what spam was and is.

------
simonvc
We launched fronted using .xyz but a few suppliers (equifax and others)
couldn't send or receive email to us, or view our website. Be warned.

~~~
flyinghamster
The problem with all these new TLDs is that spammers have poisoned the well.
The overwhelming majority of the spam I get comes from .club, .xyz, and other
"gold rush" TLDs, so I can't be surprised if some organizations just reject
them outright.

~~~
jdxcode
Makes a good case for expensive TLDs

------
corobo
Word of warning, the .xyz I once had and let drop is now listed as a "premium"
domain they want 2 grand for

Considering the word is my name (Cohan) I really doubt they realised it was a
super valuable word out of the blue.

Edit: Sorry it looks like Namecheap are now in on the secondary market game,
it looks like a squatter's got it and somehow listed their price in Namecheap

------
FlashBlaze
I first encountered .xyz in case of Alphabet[0]. And so I bought it for my own
website[1] since I found it refreshing as you said.

[0][https://abc.xyz/](https://abc.xyz/)

[1][https://flashblaze.xyz](https://flashblaze.xyz)

------
hellofunk
> The .xyz TLD is fun, small, refreshing, funky, a whole lot cheaper and you
> don't support colonialism.

You _will_ be surprised by how many people will confuse it with .xxx

~~~
larme
which can be part of the "fun"

------
clarry
If you want to come across as a fadtech startup with shitly named products,
then go with .io and .ly.

------
jdxcode
.xyz is awful. It takes 4 syllables to pronounce it and means nothing. .com
only takes 2 syllables.

~~~
elchin
It's also not i18n friendly - I speak multiple languages and in each of them
I'd have to think how to pronounce it, and it sounds awkward

~~~
yjftsjthsd-h
...as opposed to most other TLDs, which are English words or short versions
thereof?

------
sixhobbits
I went with `.co` for Ritza[0], but I still think `.com` helps you rank
better, and is still 'assumed' by many people, and at this stage I would
probably move a .com domain soon.

I noticed that places like Karat[1] moved from .io to .com, so I assume that
they had issues running on the .io domain.

I've also written a lot on CodeMentor (.io) and it "feels" harder to get
artices to rank well than on other places (e.g. DigitalOcean.com) that I have
written for. Obviously there's a lot more to ranking than choice of TLD, and I
do not have hard data, but I am fairly convinced that it remains an important
aspect.

The `.dev` TLD also seems to be gaining in popularity (e.g. CodeMentor
partially moved to arc.dev). And then places like `dev.to` are I think helping
get people used to non-com domains, but to me it's pretty interesting how much
the '.com' TLD has maintained reputation and how the newer TLDs have not taken
off as much as I expected.

[0] [https://ritza.co](https://ritza.co) [1]
[https://karat.io](https://karat.io) [https://karat.com](https://karat.com)

~~~
Jaruzel
> I noticed that places like Karat[1] moved from .io to .com,

I would say, that once you've got past your initial incubator phase, and now
have investor money, you can finally drop some cash on the overpriced .com
that's been sitting on a domain resellers[1] list for years.

\---

[1] You will never find a more wretched hive of scum and villainy.

------
KMnO4
> But it doesn't mean "input/output". It stands for British Indian Ocean
> Territory

I'm going to disagree on this. It's prescriptive. IO definitely means
"input/output" in the context of tech startups. I don't think anyone sees
github.io and thinks Indian Ocean, nor brew.sh and thinks Saint Helena, nor
Apple.com and is frustrated that they sell computers.

~~~
jrgd
It’s what the TLD stands for; nothing prescriptive nor to agree with. It’s a
fact.

~~~
LunaSea
Still doesn't mean that people actually know or care about the original
intended meaning.

Lots of words have a different meaning now than they had originally. Not even
talking about the meaning of acronyms.

~~~
jomar
The point of the article is to teach people about the original meaning, to
encourage them to care, and to point out that by paying .io domain fees you
are directly supporting this ongoing human rights disaster.

This is a time when BLM protests have led to various aspects of structural
racism in society being reexamined. For tech, it's a good time to reexamine
use of .io too.

------
jameshart
If you aren’t convinced by the moral issues or ownership disputes, consider
also that as recently as 2017 .io has had significant DNS outages affecting
domain resolution. It seems the current operators have moved the root zones to
more reliable providers since but if ownership of the domain is transferred in
the future then that is subject to change.

------
eganist
My firm blocked .xyz at the DNS level for malware frequency.

So, probably not.

------
merricksb
[https://web.archive.org/web/20200618161818/https://yarmo.eu/...](https://web.archive.org/web/20200618161818/https://yarmo.eu/blog/no-
io-yes-xyz)

------
zelly
These gTLDs always have baggage. No one takes them seriously. If you spell it
out IRL, people will append a .COM no matter what. There are also no price
limits like there are for the traditional TLDs. The registrar of .SOFTWARE or
whatever can squeeze you for $100k if they wanted and you were stupid enough
to build a brand around the TLD. There are exceptions like .DEV and .APP which
resolve fast and are owned by an entity not desperate for cash. But the random
person will still append a .COM in their minds.

And the problem with ccTLDs is you never know when people might start randomly
hating that country or the West goes to war with that country.

Just pay up for the dotcom.

------
snazz
I agree that .xyz is not necessarily professional and that .com is still the
most reputable choice. I own both snazz.xyz (because it’s fun, short, and fits
well with the theme of my username) and a more professional website with my CV
and academic information at [firstname][lastname].com. I think that owning
both serves me well at a lower annual cost than a single .io.

------
franciscop
Good luck finding my domain francisco.io with some other half-decent TLDN

Also open source is made for many different reasons, particularly there's a
split between Open vs Free software. It seems like this article is referring
to FOSS only, which is a minority of the ones used in these domains. The
majority of .io I've seen is Open Source and not Free Software.

------
brunoluiz
I don’t know, but in times where search engines are kings, do TLDs really
matter?

Some people in the past said shorter TLDs ranked better in terms of SEO, but
that doesn’t seem to be true either.

~~~
Yolta
TLDs do still matter. Part of the indieweb movement is focused around not
relying on search engines. The TLD is half of your domain so some
consideration is needed.

Personally, I could have gotten yarmo.nl, given that I'm Dutch. I chose
yarmo.eu because I'm fairly certain my future is not in the Netherlands, but
elsewhere in the EU.

I also wouldn't want a TLD that support Britain's continuing colonial rule and
defense of acts against human rights.

I'm not saying all should boycott .io, just the (open source) developers who
wish their products (and domains) to reflect their core principles.

------
mobilio
Weird ccTLD extensions always comes with "issues".

Another example is .ly

~~~
bryanrasmussen
this one has a lot of issues [https://True.ly](https://True.ly)

a little bit over 12000 issues actually.

------
lstodd
The only choice there is is what registry you cede the control of your traffic
to.

It does not matter if it's ccTLD like .io or something else like .xyz, or some
kind of second-level domain like github, gitlab, facebook or whatever.

Would it matter if news.ycombinator.com got shorted to news.yc? I seriously
doubt it. Still it is already shortened -- try putting into the "address bar".

One can argue that TLDs lost their meaning already, because it's easier to
google the brand than to guess what funky suffix they choose to have.

------
some_random
.xyz is far too difficult to type to be a good tld, no matter how memorable it
is.

------
TheAdamist
The only .xyz domains i see are from malvertising redirects that ive won
amazon/Walmart gift cards for the 50 billionth search or whatever.

Tainted spam domain that is not for legitimate businesses as far as i have
experienced.

If i was a network admin i would block the entire TLD.

