You’re probably familiar with the term TLD, but what is a TLD and what exactly does it stand for? The term TLD stands for top-level domain and refers to the ending of a domain name, or the section that immediately follows the dot symbol, such as .com, .net, .org, .edu, and others. You’ve almost certainly seen the plethora of country-specific TLDs (also known as a country code top-level domain, or ccTLD), such as .fr, .ca, or .co.uk. And you probably know that there are scads of other generic top-level domains (known as gTLDs), such as .inc, .business, and, yes, even .xxx. According to Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA), there are currently more than 1,500 TLDs.
While there are over 1,500 TLDs, this article is intended to focus on the .io domain extension and will help provide answers to some of the more common questions we hear from startups, such as “What does .io mean?,” “What is the .io domain extension?” and, most pertinent to new businesses, “Should I use the .io domain for my startup?”
Read the rest of the article on The Startup Finance Blog.