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I'm looking for a domain name and I've seen there are some new services launching with .io domain, is this suppose to mean something or there just choose it because it's short

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Of the many new or 'alternative' TLDs, maybe some like IO because it sounds 'computerish'. I/O for input-output is an old abbreviation in IT. – Jesper Mortensen♦ Dec 26 '10 at 10:42
When you can acquire an easy to remember 5-8 character domain name, it's hard to pass up. The .io ones are still pretty open in terms of properties you can acquire. Four letters + .com are pretty much all taken unless you mix a number or two in there. – Travis Sep 18 '11 at 13:09
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shouldn't they like Italy too? IT? – Umair Ashraf Feb 22 '12 at 15:58
.it would be nice too, but it's for italy and they require residency -- .io does not, anyone can buy them. – chovy Sep 26 '12 at 19:50

2 Answers

up vote 17 down vote

http://www.nic.io/

The .io domain is allocated for the British Indian Ocean area: http://www.nic.io/rules.html. Some start-ups seem to like using these types of top-level domains to build cutsey domain-hacks; http://pistacch.io, http://moustach.io/, http://twit.io/, etc.

From Wikipedia:

.io is the Internet country code top-level domain (ccTLD) for the British Indian Ocean Territory.

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-1. Quoting your rules link: 3.1 An applicant may reside in any legal jurisdiction. Nothing else indicates reservation for British Indian Ocean. – NetTecture Dec 25 '10 at 23:18
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The answer is correct, Cypher never said only residents of that territory can register such names, only that the name itself was assigned to that territory. – Alain Raynaud Dec 26 '10 at 20:32
up vote 3 down vote

IO is a popular programmer nomenclature for Input/Ouput otherwise shown as I/O. It is also the devs way of being cute with the name

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