It's not just a subdomain. It's the landing page, an email address with forwarding, creation of a Mastodon account on their instance... there's a lot there.
$20/year is actually a bargain as it would likely cost you more than that each month to run all of that yourself
Many DNS registrars offer very similar sets of value-add services for free for real TLDs people buy through them. Web "parking pages" and vanity email forwarding are table stakes.
What wouldn't be table stakes, would be if each of these was its own Mastodon instance, or something else like that that actually had an OpEx cost.
I can see a lot of potential here as an alternative for people like me who don't have or want social media accounts. Sometimes I do want to share a profile with people without linking to my business website. But managing a separate domain / server / registration / email / etc. for that purpose hasn't seemed worth it. $20 a year is pretty reasonable.
I think the one thing that would stop me from taking up on a service like this would be the "omg.lol" - it's just a little too off-brand for a guy who wears all black and hates texting. But I can see how a lot of people might be into it.
Hah! Good point. I might have to give it a shot just for the irony factor. Kinda like a happy face Tshirt. I saw an original one from the 80s (70s ?) in a vintage store for like $500, almost bought it... so in a way, as something you only wear a couple times a year this would be a real bargain ;)
I do like the idea of not just a landing page and email, but a little identity package that's not part of a social network.
The hostname is pretty fun sounding, seems to offer a basic profile page and email forwarding. Assuming the setup is noob friendly I wouldn’t call it a very unfair price. Yes you can do it for cheaper in gandi but seems more daunting a task.
I bought <my-name>.is.gay, because lol (nothing derogatory, I just used it as a link shortener). About 6 months later it stopped working because apparently reselling subdomains isn't allowed for .gay :(
The main reason is you have more protection and guaranteed continual ownership of the thing (depending on the TLD you choose, of course). Whereas if this service shut down in 12 months time ... well it wouldn't be buckling any trends by doing so.
And if they shut down and let the omg.lol lapse or sell it, someone could then redirect all the subdomains to who knows what.
Another reason might be domain trust? If spammers use omg.lol subdomains the entire thing might be blacklisted for email.
Domains are easier to resell. I don't think there will be a secondary market for omg.lol and if you sell you business based on an omg.lol it will be a red flag vs. a top level domain.
On the other hand if you intent is a personal CV / bio type page, with email (you need fastmail too) and so on, the $20 is a great deal.
But I would rather just use a xyz.netlify.com for such a project, then couple that with a free email service.
> Another reason might be domain trust? If spammers use omg.lol subdomains the entire thing might be blacklisted for email.
I think that them being on the https://wiki.mozilla.org/Public_Suffix_List makes that unlikely. (a Public Suffix is a thing like .co.uk — would it make sense to blacklist .co.uk? Not unless you're the type of postmaster who is willing to blacklist entire TLDs like .biz as well.)
It's not just a subdomain. It's the landing page, an email address with forwarding, creation of a Mastodon account on their instance... there's a lot there.
$20/year is actually a bargain as it would likely cost you more than that each month to run all of that yourself
That's great until they get bored of running the service and you've now lost all of the aforementioned which are dependent on their domain.
Seems like a bit of fun. I've definitely thought even less about something before parting with $20 on it /shrug
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I mean you could say the same about any business. I fail to see how this is unique in that regard.
Many DNS registrars offer very similar sets of value-add services for free for real TLDs people buy through them. Web "parking pages" and vanity email forwarding are table stakes.
What wouldn't be table stakes, would be if each of these was its own Mastodon instance, or something else like that that actually had an OpEx cost.
Trouble is, many registrars do with with way worse UX. I own domains from two registrars and loathe to use their interfaces.
A DNS server, landing page and email can be had for free. For the rest there are free alternatives like twitter, pastebin, etc.
I get it, but $20 still seems rather high for that. Anyway, it's a cool website.
Interesting... I share that feeling, yet, if they actually positioned this as:
"Pay 20usd/y for your social account in our mastodon instance and get free subdomain, webpage and email forwarding"
I would find this totally acceptable, considering the potential costs of actually running a mastodon instance.
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I can see a lot of potential here as an alternative for people like me who don't have or want social media accounts. Sometimes I do want to share a profile with people without linking to my business website. But managing a separate domain / server / registration / email / etc. for that purpose hasn't seemed worth it. $20 a year is pretty reasonable.
I think the one thing that would stop me from taking up on a service like this would be the "omg.lol" - it's just a little too off-brand for a guy who wears all black and hates texting. But I can see how a lot of people might be into it.
Honestly the dichotomy of that personality type with an "@omg.lol" email is pretty great to me, personally.
Hah! Good point. I might have to give it a shot just for the irony factor. Kinda like a happy face Tshirt. I saw an original one from the 80s (70s ?) in a vintage store for like $500, almost bought it... so in a way, as something you only wear a couple times a year this would be a real bargain ;)
I do like the idea of not just a landing page and email, but a little identity package that's not part of a social network.
> it's just a little too off-brand for a guy who wears all black and hates texting.
I'm in the boat with style but I threw 20$ at it because I know I'll get a few interesting looks. Might even add it to my "recruiter" resume.
Bummer that .nil and .null are not available.
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The hostname is pretty fun sounding, seems to offer a basic profile page and email forwarding. Assuming the setup is noob friendly I wouldn’t call it a very unfair price. Yes you can do it for cheaper in gandi but seems more daunting a task.
The eTLD stuff they mention are interesting, still trying to understand what it actually means though. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_Suffix_List
I bought <my-name>.is.gay, because lol (nothing derogatory, I just used it as a link shortener). About 6 months later it stopped working because apparently reselling subdomains isn't allowed for .gay :(
How much were they selling subdomains for, out of curiosity? (Was it like a single person, or a company?)
$5, pretty sure it was just a single person.
Why would pay you $20/y for a regular domain that doesn't do anything until you spend more money (and time and money) to make it do something?
The main reason is you have more protection and guaranteed continual ownership of the thing (depending on the TLD you choose, of course). Whereas if this service shut down in 12 months time ... well it wouldn't be buckling any trends by doing so.
And if they shut down and let the omg.lol lapse or sell it, someone could then redirect all the subdomains to who knows what.
Another reason might be domain trust? If spammers use omg.lol subdomains the entire thing might be blacklisted for email.
Domains are easier to resell. I don't think there will be a secondary market for omg.lol and if you sell you business based on an omg.lol it will be a red flag vs. a top level domain.
On the other hand if you intent is a personal CV / bio type page, with email (you need fastmail too) and so on, the $20 is a great deal.
But I would rather just use a xyz.netlify.com for such a project, then couple that with a free email service.
> Another reason might be domain trust? If spammers use omg.lol subdomains the entire thing might be blacklisted for email.
I think that them being on the https://wiki.mozilla.org/Public_Suffix_List makes that unlikely. (a Public Suffix is a thing like .co.uk — would it make sense to blacklist .co.uk? Not unless you're the type of postmaster who is willing to blacklist entire TLDs like .biz as well.)
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Because of the ToS [0], in particular articles 3.1 and 3.2.
[0] https://home.omg.lol/info/legal
What about this concerns you?
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because you can't get omg.lol, it is obv taken. Not saying it is great reason, but that is the reason since you asked.