Top10.co Explains Its Choice of .Co for Fresh Web Site
Firm that made a big .com domain purchase in 2010 launches a fresh product on .co in 2011.
Top10.com Media Ltd is no stranger to domain names. Last year the firm 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 firm 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 regarding the firm’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 regarding 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 fresh 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 notable 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 fresh kind of product, and this is a fresh 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 firm launched Top10.co at the Launch conference last month in San Francisco. You can see its presentation here.
