The second bit of news that I wanted to share this weekend is that I decided to go on a bit of a domain shopping spree the other night after the .me domains went on sale to the general public. I admit, it was sort of an impulse purchase for me since I had actually just found out about it that day through TechCrunch (I guess I have been living under a rock for the past few months). I had gotten in on this later on that night so I never ran into any of the issues that a lot of people in that post’s comments seemed to be having.

So what is a .me domain anyway? Well, it’s not every day that new countries are created, so this is sort of a once in a blue moon event. To make a long story short, .me is the internet country code assigned for Montenegro, which recently became an independent nation. Each country has its own extension, often loosely based on the native spelling of its name (e.g. Australia is .au, Germany (Deutschland) is .de).

Courtesy of www.mysona.dk

Flag of Montenegro (Courtesy of www.mysona.dk)

Montenegro used to be part of the former Yugoslavia, which then split up. It actually remained a part of a smaller Yugoslavia for a little while, along with Serbia, which would then later become known as “Serbia and Montenegro”. Montenegro then formally declared its independence in 2006.

Anyway, it seemed like a good opportunity to get some good names in some topics that I am interested in anyway, so I figured why not. And .me seems to have a unique branding potential (I did get kevinhassett.me for instance, how cool is that!). I’m not quite sure what I am going to do with them all just yet so right now they are just sitting empty and doing nothing. Maybe I’ll sell some, or maybe I’ll use them for some niche pages that I have in mind.

Who knows what sort of success I’ll end up having with this… nothing ventured, nothing gained, right? Maybe there is some value to these .me domains or perhaps they may just be hype and end up being a waste of time and money for me. Time will tell. In the meantime, I am keeping an open and positive mindset about it and will focus on its potential benefits rather than any downside there may be. Oftentimes the downsides are just our minds playing tricks on us anyways.