Last time around we chewed on some food for thought about domain registration. We explored the “big three” top level domains (TLDs): dot-com, dot-net and dot-org, along with cousins dot-biz and dot-info. This time, we’re going to explore a few more TLD strategies. It’s a bit of a trip, because more than anything else, TLDs help the Web live up to its “world wide” moniker.

Domain names are weird. In the wild and woolly days of the early Web, users picked domains based on a quirky sense of humor or raw, boring functionality. A domain name was nothing more than an address, and unless you picked a strange one, it was about as significant to you as your street number: important, but hardly representative of who you are.