Linking the Ancient World to the Digital Era, New gTLD Transcends Commercial Expectations
Guru is an ancient Sanskrit word that means spiritual teacher.
It is also the most popular new top-level Internet domain name.
Since .GURU opened for public registration of second-level domains on January 29, it has far surpassed any of the other 49 new top-level domains launched this year – until .BERLIN opened for public registration last week and jumped into second place.
What makes .GURU so popular? Is it an East/West convergence thing? The serenity of ancient spiritual beliefs? The meditative elegance of Buddha? The magnanimity of the Dalai Lama? Maybe it’s the memory of the Beatles’ 1968 sojourn to the Maharishi’s ashram?
.GURU’s popularity wasn’t even anticipated by Donuts, the registry that owns it. A Donuts official told TheDomains.com that internal projections didn’t place .GURU among the top half of strings expected to get the most registrations. Since Donuts applied for 300 top-level domains, that means the company thought more than 150 others would be more crowd-pleasing.
Seriously? Wouldn’t you expect a sublime performance from a spiritual leader?
Actually, .GURU’s appeal has nothing to do with transcendence. Its popularity is based on a simple rule of capitalism: It is easily marketed. .GURU is a winner of a domain name because it not only implies supreme knowledge but can be appended to almost any word, noun, adjective, verb, or phrase, such as secondmortgage.GURU, goofy.GURU, quit.GURU, or becomeyourown.GURU – all registered domain names in the new extension.
It seems a tad counterintuitive, however, to link some names to .GURU that people have registered, such as anxieties.GURU, mean.GURU, and rich.GURU. And some of the new domains border on sacrilege, or at least drain the word “guru” of its authority, such as beerdrinking.GURU, voodoo.GURU, and vices.GURU.
No matter. An investment is an investment, and .GURU turned out to be a very good one, indeed. Chances are the domain’s long-term value will withstand the oddities that its flexibility permits, as in twerking.GURU.
I just hope Bob Dylan’s people move quickly to register Workingona.Guru.