Changed its domain from .com to .top — A startup
Some firms trade in longer .coms for shorter second level domains in other extensions.
I love watching the Chinese domain market since it is full of surprises. Recently, I read a news story that a Chinese startup changed its domain from .com to .top. That challenges the conventional wisdom of .com being the ultimate upgrade.
Cryptocurrency exchange DCPPlus was founded in 2017 (apparently in Hong Kong) and it operated from the brand-matching domain DCPPlus.com. The exchange handles multiple digital currencies counting Bitcoin, Ethereum, and Litecoin. Recently, its name was shortened to simply DCP. To accompany the name change, the founders purchased DCP.top for reportedly 100,000 yuan (regarding $15,000) on December 6, 2019.
DCP.top has gone live and DCPPlus.com forwards visitors to the fresh site. Why not upgrade to DCP.com? Well, this is not possible since DCP.com is by now being used by the American M&A firm District Capital Partners.
This reminds me of the firm Supply whose founders pitched successfully in Shark Tank and received a $300,000 investment last year. The firm then changed its domain from GetSupply.com to Supply.co. Why the change? Founder Patrick Coddou later tweeted “it will forever be worth it to not be called Get Supply anymore”. In other words, GetSupply.com misled consumers to believe the firm’s name was actually “Get Supply”.
In these two cases, we can see that the founders consider the name part of a domain more notable than its extension. In choosing a domain, its name is considered first, followed by its extension – and the name must match the brand.
Of course, the ultimate upgrade remains the exact match .com. Carrot founder Trevor Mauch told Reglike that people referred to his firm as “On Carrot” when his firm used the domain OnCarrot.com. He upgraded to Carrot.com.
