Volatility in Social Platforms Leads to Surge in .Social Domains

Premium .social registrations are up 485% MoM in Nov MTD vs. October

BELLEVUE, Wash., Dec. 6, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- Shortly after Elon Musk purchased Twitter for $44 billion, the social media platform lost more than 1.3 million users,^[1] and around the same time .social domain registrations surged, per data from Identity Digital,™ a leader in connecting the online world with domain names and related technologies. For example, in the first two weeks of November, month-over-month (MoM) .social top-level domain (TLD) registrations were up 435%.

"Volatility in social platforms that people rely on leads users to take action to own their digital identity and content, which often starts with finding a domain name," said Akram J. Atallah, CEO of Identity Digital. "One platform capitalizing on the Twitter shakeup is Mastodon.social, a distributed social media alternative that boasts, "Social networking that's not for sale."

In a Nov. 8 post, Founder Eugen Rochko said the social network gained 489,000 users in less than two weeks, boosting its membership to over one million active monthly users. With the growing popularity of Mastodon, Identity Digital has also seen a 5.8x MoM (October to November) increase in high-value keyword .social names being snatched up, including arts.social, lol.social and justice.social. Many of these domains point to Mastodon profiles/instances. This surge indicates users are recognizing the ability to brand themselves on social media with these memorable descriptive domain names leveraging both sides of the dot to show who they are and what they do.

Instead of creating a single unified platform, Mastodon allows anyone to use open-source software to boot up a server that hosts a Twitter-like community with its own rules. Together those servers form a collective of interlinked communities dubbed the "Fediverse." Users can join a server that matches their interests and community standards, connect with others on different servers, or block all content from a particular server completely.

"Social media users understand that big tech doesn't work without them," said Atallah. "They are making a stand to own their content and build digital identities resistant to platform volatility and leveraging descriptive domains like .social to do so."

Identity Digital Inc. simplifies and connects the online world with domain names and related technologies to empower people to build, market, and own their authentic digital identities. With the world's largest portfolio of nearly 300 TLDs, such as .live, .technology, and .restaurant, Identity Digital operates around 25 million domains on its innovative registry services platform. In addition, it enables customers to discover, register, support and use high-quality domain names with its registrar, Name.com. Headquartered in Bellevue, WA, Identity Digital is a global company with approximately 250 employees. For more information, please visit identity.digital.

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^[1] Source: USAtoday.com, "Twitter lost more than 1.3 million users in the week after Elon Musk bought it"

SOURCE Identity Digital, Inc.