Top10.co Explains Its Choice of .Co for New Web Site
Wednesday, March 30th, 2011
Company that made a big .com domain purchase in 2010 launches a new product on .co in 2011.
Top10.com Media Ltd is no stranger to domain names. Last year the company forked over $1 million in cash and equity for the domain name Top10.com, which it uses for his communications service comparison engine.
When the company decided to launch a list creation and sharing site it chose the domain name Top10.co. I reached out to co-founder Tom Leathes to find out more about the company’s decision to use .co.
You’re known for your top10.com comparison site. Why branch out?
Top10.com is the UK’s leading comparison site for the communications industry. Top10.co is a really different business – it’s a global product to help people express their interests and find recommendations on any subject under the sun.
As the product evolved during the building phase, it became very clear that they’re different propositions, so we really needed to have them on different domains, allowing each to continue to breathe and grow.
When did you first think to use a .co domain for this?
We read about the .co opportunity early last year and made a note to take part in the land-rush to acquire Top10.co As soon as we decided to launch the new site on a different domain, using the .co was a unanimous choice.
Why not .me or something else?
Despite formerly being tied to Colombia, .co has never had a real legacy of usage and it’s also not suggestive of any particular service, product or sector (unlike say .tv, .mobi and .me). Most importantly, it’s not a regional domain and has no geographic ties to specific users around the world – which is very important for a worldwide product such as this. From an SEO perspective it also has all the global benefits of .com.
It’s also short – which we like – and it feels more suited to a brand than .me for example, which feels more like a personal site rather than a community product.
We also think the .co registry have done a great job in promoting the use of .co’s for innovative startups. It’s early days, but we think the work they’re doing will add a lot of value to the .co brand. Top10 is a new kind of product, and this is a new kind of domain that’s being marketed very well.
Does it create any confusion between your .co and .com?
We don’t think so. Top10 is a fairly generic term to have as a brand, so it’s not like having Nike.com and Nike.co for example. The products are also totally different, and we’re not inter-linking them in any way, so we’ve not had any confusion from users of either one.
The company launched Top10.co at the Launch conference last month in San Francisco. You can see its presentation here.
Further Reading:
At least they get to catch all the .com typos
“”At least they get to catch all the .com typos”"
And I’m sure that played significantly in their choosing.
I agree 100% with the answer to the question “Why not .me or something else?”.
I just checked both sites and their marketing strategy is fairly obvious.
Top10.co is the warm and fuzzy site for dad, mom, the kids and grandparents to post all of their top 10 favorite things.
Top10.com is the site dad, mom, the kids and grandparents will type when trying to remember Top10.co where they will have the “pleasure” of reviewing the latest deals for laptops, broadband and mobile phones…
nice site but hard to clarify the difference between .com site and .co site, they seem to be similar.
David,
Top10.com is a UK targeted site.
Top10.co is a global targeted site.
If what you suggested is true, they would have positioned Top10.com not as UK targeted.
“Despite formerly being tied to Colombia, .co has never had a real legacy of usage and it’s also not suggestive of any particular service, product or sector (unlike say .tv, .mobi and .me). Most importantly, it’s not a regional domain and has no geographic ties to specific users around the world – which is very important for a worldwide product such as this. From an SEO perspective it also has all the global benefits of .com.”
As soon as I read this, I immediately tuned out and stopped reading. This is clearly false, as .CO is a ccTLD for Columbia.
PT- I immediately tuned out and stopped reading when I realized you still can’t spell Colombia.
PT –
He’s actually right. ccTLD and all, there were less than 30k “.com.co’s” mainly used within Colombia.
So this statement is absolutely accurate: “.co has never had a real legacy of usage and it’s also not suggestive of any particular service”.
What’s false?
I’m with Jason here. Regardless of what you think about .co, I think his statement about its legacy use is 100% accurate.
I agree with Jason too. .ME and .TV are technically the ccTLDs for Montenegro and Tuvalu, respectively. Anyway nobody seems to mind the fact they’ve been marketed and used with a meaning other than the original one. Even .ORG was meant for nonprofit organization but it seems lately this has changed. I’m not sure why when it comes to .CO being branded as a new gTLD, this makes a lot of people in the domain community so upset. On other domain blogs there have been even comments full of anger and hatred against this extension.
I really like their point of view.