A domain hack is an unconventional domain name that combines domain levels, especially the top-level domain (TLD), to spell out the full "name" or title of the domain. Examples include del.icio.us (http://del.icio.us/), goo.gl (http://goo.gl/) and fold.it (http://fold.it/). In this context, the word hack denotes a clever trick (as in programming), not an exploit or break-in (as in security).
Domains such as .al, .am, .as, .at, .co, .in, .io, .is, .it, .ly, .me, .mp, .net, .nr, .re, .rs, .st or .us (Albania, Armenia, American Samoa, Austria, Colombia, India, British Indian Ocean Territory, Iceland, Italy, Libya, Montenegro, Northern Mariana Islands, .net, Nauru, Réunion, Serbia, Sao Tome and Principe or United States respectively) are easy to use as domain hacks because they correspond to short, simple dictionary words in the English language.
Domain hacks offer the ability to produce extremely short domain names. For example, blo.gs has a total of only five letters (versus blogs.com, at eight letters), as every letter is taken into account as the site's title. Similarly, tweet in, a common Twitter mimic, is represented through the domain http://2et.in. This makes them potentially valuable as redirectors (like i.am, which redirects to FortuneCity's V3 service), pastebins, base domains from which to delegate subdomains and URL shortening services.
Read more about Domain Hack: History, International Names, Other Languages
Famous quotes containing the words domain and/or hack:
“Without metaphor the handling of general concepts such as culture and civilization becomes impossible, and that of disease and disorder is the obvious one for the case in point. Is not crisis itself a concept we owe to Hippocrates? In the social and cultural domain no metaphor is more apt than the pathological one.”
—Johan Huizinga (1872–1945)
“Painting consumes labour not disproportionate to its effect; but a fellow will hack half a year at a block of marble to make something in stone that hardly resembles a man. The value of statuary is owing to its difficulty. You would not value the finest head cut upon a carrot.”
—Samuel Johnson (1709–1784)