Domain Names

I have this weird thing with domain names. Even if I don’t have a use for it right now, I’ll compulsively buy a domain name just to make sure someone else can’t take it away from me.

I guess it’s a form of brand protection.

When I first launched this site, I would have loved to launch it on the jetroid.com domain, but sadly it wasn’t available so used jetholt.com instead.

I can’t remember what it was being used for, but someone else owned it. No idea what their intentions were, but they even registered a twitter account for it.

I don’t remember exactly what I did - perhaps I used some online tool, or perhaps I set up a cron job to check, or perhaps I just set a reminder for the renewal date - but somehow I alerted myself when jetroid.com became available for purchase, and I bought it. I actually remember waking up and buying it whilst I was still in bed, just because I was so excited.

Since then, I haven’t really been using it. I set it up to redirect to my main site, but that doesn’t count.

For the longest of times, I also really wanted to buy the jetro.id domain name, but I found that you had to be a resident of Indonesia to buy it. When I found that out I was still in University, didn’t know anyone from Indonesia and didn’t know if I’d ever go there.

Fast forward several years, and my girlfriend asks me about domain names. Her question doesn’t matter for this discussion, but I noticed in one of her screenshots that a recommended domain for her ended in .id. I almost got a lightbulb moment in my head and kinda wondered if she could buy it on my behalf, only to find out that they recently relaxed the restrictions and now the .id domains are available to everyone.

So the crux is that now I own both jetroid.com and jetro.id but am not doing anything with them.

I have plans - or, well, ideas - for both of those domains, but nothing concrete yet. And mixed in with all of this is some confused ideas about identity and branding that I guess I’ll have to write about tomorrow.

Oh, and I’ve also always wanted to own jet.net since I was a kid. Before I knew that it was possible for an individual to own a domain name. But I’ll almost certainly never get to own that one; it’s been registered since before I was even born, and would be prohibitively expensive.