So I Bought a Short Domain Name

Domain names are a strange thing. From the original simplicity of .com, .org, .net, and .gov have come so many top-level domains that it's all but impossible to keep up with them all. There's the country specific domains, of course, along with newer full-word domains including everything from .today to .guru.

It's a mess. But then, that's ok. Most people Google websites' names anyhow, and seldom type in the full address. And when they type in your site's address, they'll still assume it's a .com which is why I'll always recommend going for a .com domain whenever possible.

Except, I broke my rule. I just bought a .ch domain (Switzerland's country-specific TLD): techin.ch.

I've considered getting a short URL before, as every self-respecting geek has from time to time, especially when a short URL actually let you fit more into a tweet. That's not quite as important now that Twitter auto-shortens every URL with t.co. But, it's still cool to use unique TLDs to get a fun domain name, and when my friend Phillip Gruneich mentioned that techin.ch was available, and cost less than $15 to register, it was too good to pass up. I considered getting an even more fun URL, such as t”.co using international characters, but that'd be irritating to type at best (seeing as it has to be a closing curled quote, since straight quotes aren't allowed). So techin.ch it was.

What to do with a short URL

But what should one do with a short URL? Ideally, you'll use it to shorten links you're sharing online, and perhaps add it onto your file sharing tool. I use Droplr to share files, and it already lets you shorten links, so that'd seem like the ideal place to use my short URL.

Yet, the most common way to use short URLs is with Bitly, the de facto link shortener of choice today. It's great for shortening links, used by just about everyone from the NY Times to, yes, Envato, and integrates with almost every app. That helps with my ever-present worry about relying on web services that may go away—Bitly is rather unlikely to just disappear anytime soon with that many large companies relying on them, and it already offers an export tool for paid accounts so you can take your links with you. And then, most importantly for my use, Bitly integrates with IFTTT, so my auto-tweeted links can be shortened with my short URL.

And so, I hit a compromise: I'm using techin.ch directly with Bitly for shortening links, and the added the subdomain da.techin.ch with Droplr for sharing files. That's as simple as setting the A-records on Namecheap separately for the domain itself and for the subdomain. Then, on both Bitly and Droplr, I've set the short domain to redirect to Techinch.com.

That's not all you could do. I'm half-way considering using it for my email, but then again, telling people your email over the phone is difficult enough with any domain other than @gmail or something terribly recognizable.

But that's fine. The domain didn't need to do much. It gives me a little bit of custom branding, and made Bitly and Droplr nicer. And it's fun. That's quite enough for a string of 9 characters.

I still have a fear of link rot, that Bitly or Droplr could go away and my shortened URLs would point to nothing. But most things you share on social networks will only be seen now, and won't matter as much even a year from now. That especially is the case with the quick screenshots and such I'm sharing on Droplr. And I happen to think Bitly will stick around, at least as long as my short domain.

At any rate, now that I've got Twitter Cards and a short URL for Techinch, article links from here should look much nicer on my favorite social network. And that's fun.

Thoughts? @reply me on Twitter.