Domain Hack - International Names

International Names

In most cases, registration of these short domain names relies on the use of country code domains, each of which has a unique two-letter identifier.

For example, blo.gs makes use of the top-level domain (TLD) .gs (South Georgia and the South Sandwich Islands) to spell "blogs", fa.st makes use of the TLD .st (São Tomé and Príncipe) to spell "fast", chronolo.gy uses the TLD .gy (Guyana) to spell "chronology", Instagr.am makes use of the TLD .am (Armenia) to spell the name of photo-sharing service "Instagram", helpmelearn.it makes use of the TLD .it (Italy) to spell "help me learn it", sexyi.am uses TLD .am (Armenia) and goodluckwith.us uses TLD .us (United States) and sharing it for subdomains with free hosting, and tel.ly uses the TLD .ly (Libya) to spell "telly" (a popular British colloquial term for television).

The third-level domains del.icio.us, cr.yp.to and e.xplo.it make use of the SLDs icio.us, yp.to and xplo.it from the TLDs .us (United States), .to (Tonga) and .it (Italy) to spell "delicious", "crypto" and "exploit" respectively.

In some cases, an entire country code domain has been re-purposed in its international marketing, such as .am (Armenia), .fm (Federated States of Micronesia), .cd (Democratic Republic of the Congo), .dj (Djibouti), and .tv (Tuvalu) for sites delivering various forms of audiovisual content.

.ly (Libya) has been used for English words that end with suffix "ly", such as sil.ly. Popular URL shortening services bit.ly, brief.ly, name.ly and ow.ly use this hack.

The link shortening service gadaf.fi was created as a reaction to Libyan authorities yanking a .ly link shortener.

Further information: ccTLD#Commercial and vanity use