ccTLD

If you follow US politics and the upcoming presidential election, you likely follow President Barack Obama and Governor Mitt Romney on Twitter. To make the most use of the limited space on Twitter, most people use url shorteners, the Twitter default being T.CO.

One of the most popular url shorteners is Bitly, which is found at Bit.LY, with .LY being the ccTLD for the country of Libya. Both President Obama and Governor Romney previously used Bitly to shorten their urls. It appears that both candidates have come to the same conclusion with respect to using Libya’s ccTLD for their shortening, and they are both using unique ccTLD shorteners.

President Obama appears to prefer to use OFA.BO for his shortening, and Governor Romney appears to prefer Mi.TT. The .BO domain name is a ccTLD for the country of Bolivia, and the .TT domain name is the ccTLD for the country of Trinidad & Tobago.

Mi.TT appears to be registered to someone from Targeted Victory, a  interactive advertising agency that appears to support Governor Romney’s presidential campaign. OFA.BO appears to be registered to the Democratic Party.

It’s neat to see the candidates using these ccTLD domain names so prominently.

I don’t usually publish press releases, but this one is pretty unique. Congratulations to professional wrestler Mister Saint Laurent, who was able to acquire the one letter M.SL domain name. .SL is the ccTLD operated by the county of Sierra Leone.

Here’s the press release I received:

ORLANDO, FL, August 28, 2012 — Professional wrestler Mister Saint Laurent (MSL) has announced his acquisition of M.SL, the world’s first one character .SL domain name. The .SL extension, which is controlled by the West African nation of Sierra Leone, has never before allowed a one character registration. However, they have made an exception for the AWA World Tag Team Champion and allowed the purchase of the M.SL domain.

Not only is Mister Saint Laurent known around the world for his wrestling prowess, but he’s also the great grandson of former Prime Minister of Canada Louis St. Laurent. Experienced in international relations, Mister Saint Laurent was able to eventually secure the domain after an intense eight month negotiation. With many registrars not allowing one character domains and others having sold their one character domains for thousands and sometimes millions of dollars, there were many times MSL almost gave up on his quest to register M.SL.

“Winning the world championship was an unbelievable experience, but having the world’s only one letter .SL domain name means more to me than anything,” said Mister Saint Laurent. “The fans on mistersaintlaurent.com have been so loyal to me and I’m happy that accessing my site will now be easier than ever.”

The exact amount of the four figure purchase price has not been disclosed.