Month: September 2010

The Twitter Glossary, part of the official Twitter Help Center, contains lingo used frequently to talk about the company’s features and services. 

Visitors can browse the definitions for “hovercards” and “promoted tweets”, and believe it or not, still lurking throughout the Glossary are a number of available domain names. 

Twitter Glossary Terms

Because of the number of .COM registrations, it’s a lot more difficult to find domain names available that have immediate potential for an investor, whether the domain name is intended for resale or development. 

However, with the soaring popularity of Twitter, a number of web sites and terms have been made popular by the microblogging service – so as the Twitter vocabulary becomes more widely used, if you have plans for a third-party Twitter service, owning a relevant term could help your branding and marketing efforts. 

Five years ago, no one really cared about the term “Tweet”, but now the term is plastered all over the internet.

Twitter is regularly updating its web site, blog, and Help Center, so if you dig around you might discover some keywords that no one else has registered.

Available Domain Names

The Twitter Glossary goes from A to Z and includes well-known terms such as “goodies” and lesser known terms like “home timeline”.  Examples of Twitter lingo include: cyberbullying, cyberharassment, direct message, DM, favorite and dozens more.

Now, if you’re looking for some available domain names, you can always scour the Twitter blog and find domains like EvolvingEcosystem.com, or TheFledgingInitiative.com available.  But here’s a couple Glossary Terms (along with their Twitter definitions) I found that are still available for hand registration at the time this story appeared online. 

And just because they’re listed in the Twitter glossary, that’s not to say they’re worth even the registration fee, but if you dig through the site and Help Center, you might stumble upon a term that interests you — and is available.

Follow Count (followcount.com) – The numbers that reflect how many people you follow, and how many people follow you. Found on your Twitter Profile.

Over Capacity Page (overcapacitypage.com) – Users sometimes refer to this page as the “Fail Whale” page. The “Twitter is over capacity” message and a whale image shows up when our site is having trouble keeping up with traffic.

While this news might sound pretty shocking to some domain buyers, it might be less shocking to others.  

According to Valuate.com, the web site that provides free domain name appraisals, this popular country code top level domain name is worth $40,000. 

Globally, the number of monthly searches for the keyword in question using the Google Adwords: Keyword Tool (with a match type of “Exact”) is 1,830,000.  Tailor the “Exact” search locally to the domain name’s country, and the number of searches for the month of August was over 60,000.

What’s the domain name?

The domain name is Fish.ca, a Canada domain name. 

However, unlike some country code top level domain names such as .TV which can be registered by people outside of the domain’s country, requirements for registering a Canada domain name are more strict. 

Now, I have to admit, I know almost nothing about .ca domains, but after stumbling across fish.ca available for hand-registration at GoDaddy, I’ve learned more about the process.

In order to register a .ca domain, you must meet certain eligibility requirements. 

Basically, you must be a Canadian citizen or permanent resident, or operate a corporation in Canada.  While there are other options for registering a .ca domain, the process is restrictive.  And speaking from experience, even if the registration appears to go through, if you don’t meet the requirements, it will fail and the domain name will be removed from your account.

While there are probably tricks that some domain buyers use to register a name, I’m not aware of any legal means, besides working with someone who meets the requirements and who can register the domain in their name.

Fishing is very popular in Canada, and for just over $10, if you meet the requirements for registering a .CA domain, you might want to think about picking up Fish.ca. 

Like I said earlier, I don’t know the first thing about .CA domains, but according to the search volumes, globally and tailored to Canada, it seems like this domain is worth more than the registration fee.