Emoji + ASCII Domains Can Now Be Registered

Emoji domainsLast November, I asked readers if they would consider registering an Emoji domain name. At that time, a little more than half of the people who voted said they would not consider registering an Emoji domain name. This morning, I was sent an email from Jon Roig, who let me know people can now register domain names with both Emoji and ASCII characters in them.

Here’s what Jon told me about creating Emoji and ASCII domain names along with some examples of them to show their utility:

i❤️.ws  is a new Emoji Domain Registration web app created by the Domain Research Group. For the first time, it lets you create domains which contain a mix of emoji and text.
Some examples:

I think these kinds of domain names are creative for a mobile marketing campaign or a fun way for people who know each other to share a fun link. The downside is that it is much tougher for people to understand how to navigate to these domain names without clicking a link. I could see this posing a security challenge since I typically won’t just click a link within an email to avoid phishing schemes and other malware issues.

One other update Jon shared with me this morning is that there is now an Emoji domain name marketplace report found on  i❤.ws/marketplace. This marketplace lists Emoji domain names that are for sale via the aftermarket at GoDaddy. If you’re interested in seeing what Emoji domain names are listed for sale, that seems like a good place to find them.

As of now, it still seems that Emoji domain names are only  available for .ws domain names a limited number of TLDs.

Elliot Silver
Elliot Silver
About The Author: Elliot Silver is an Internet entrepreneur and publisher of DomainInvesting.com. Elliot is also the founder and President of Top Notch Domains, LLC, a company that has closed eight figures in deals. Please read the DomainInvesting.com Terms of Use page for additional information about the publisher, website comment policy, disclosures, and conflicts of interest. Reach out to Elliot: Twitter | Facebook | LinkedIn

29 COMMENTS

  1. Thanks for sharing this, Elliot. Trying to get the word out!

    Quick clarification: the Marketplace does have some dotcoms, but several of them are hieroglyphs! (Best viewed on iOS or Safari…)
    i❤️.ws//marketplace/1?filter=isDotCom

  2. i think the other tlds, have some asterisks on ownership, rights perceptions etc. ive done all of mine in.ws

    its been nice to be something visual, trendy, younger.

    tipping point will come soon when us dinosaurs with android phones and windows keyboards see how easy it is to type, emoji.ws or emoji emoji emoji .ws

    my samsung just switched over yesterday with my software upgrade, so entering

    i❤️nashville.ws or .ws is tap tap tap

    most of the industry on a laptop or desktop really cant picture how easy it is to type these, but its coming.

    my summary – Emoji domain names are IDN’s where most of the world has or will have a keyboard on their phones or devices. i like em.

    thanks for the post.

    Page Howe

  3. I like em.

    But I don’t think I’ll invest in or get any. At least not now.

    Might be popular with teens and college kids for vanity email-addresses. Problem is: few use email — mostly just chat and text and messaging — not much email.

    Doesn’t some guy in Germany own the “EMOJI” brand in many classes. There was a story about his “Emoji” empire in one of the tech biz publications. May have even held up the launch of Sony’s “The Emoji Movie” — not sure.

    • Just thought I’d add that because chat and messaging apps are where most people spend their time now there is a real potential for emoji in chatbots or as short links to chatbots in say, Facebook Messenger. Also emoji are not just used by the young. My 50-something accountant uses them now!

  4. I was curious about Sony’s “The Emoji Movie”, its big Summer tent movie.
    All of its trademark applications per EMOJI were refused because of the prior EMOJI trademark filings by the individual in Germany. Then Sony filed an express abandonment for all the marks. Will this prevent licensing revenues, etc?
    I know you can’t copyright a title, so I assume that’s why Sony will still call the film, THE EMOJI MOVIE.
    Will Sony have to license the mark from the guy in Germany?

    Serial Number Reg. Number Word Mark Check Status Live/Dead
    1 87128390 THE EMOJI MOVIE TSDR DEAD
    2 87072448 EMOJIMOVIE: EXPRESS YOURSELF TSDR DEAD
    3 87072438 EMOJIMOVIE: EXPRESS YOURSELF TSDR DEAD
    4 87072430 EMOJIMOVIE: EXPRESS YOURSELF TSDR DEAD
    5 87072426 EMOJIMOVIE: EXPRESS YOURSELF TSDR DEAD
    6 87072419 EMOJIMOVIE: EXPRESS YOURSELF TSDR DEAD
    7 87072414 EMOJIMOVIE TSDR DEAD
    8 87072409 EMOJIMOVIE TSDR DEAD
    9 87072407 EMOJIMOVIE: EXPRESS YOURSELF TSDR DEAD
    10 87072401 EMOJIMOVIE: EXPRESS YOURSELF TSDR DEAD
    11 87072396 EMOJIMOVIE TSDR DEAD
    12 87072390 EMOJIMOVIE: EXPRESS YOURSELF TSDR DEAD
    13 87072384 EMOJIMOVIE TSDR DEAD
    14 87072347 EMOJIMOVIE TSDR DEAD
    15 86794817 THE EMOJI MOVIE TSDR DEAD
    16 86794807 THE EMOJI MOVIE TSDR DEAD
    17 86794785 THE EMOJI MOVIE TSDR DEAD
    18 86794772 THE EMOJI MOVIE TSDR DEAD

  5. Brands, Startups and SMBs are currently using Emoji Domains as part of their overall Marketing Strategies, including …

    Honda
    .ws

    Ray-Ban
    .ws

    Warby Parker
    .ws

    SonyPictures
    .ws

    Turkish Airlines
    ✈️.ws

    Budweiser
    ❤️.ws

    Dairy Palace
    .ws

    MGM Grand
    .ws

    Norwegian Airlines
    ✈️.ws

    and More!

    • Ahh… I was wondering who bought those characters. And why.

      GoDaddy did some work over the last few months to make hieroglyphs possible. (The execs even gave out a fake award for it at our annual TechFest.)

    • Glyphs show up in their correct form on a number of devices including iphone.

      I guess you mean GD did a little tweak to ensure they show up correctly on site?

      They can be promotedadded on most parking sites/auction sites in their correct form except ,guess where- Sedo!

  6. Thanks steve, so do I!

    Been playing around with one of the glyphs , tranlation is dung in EH but I am tarting it up tp look a little like Poo and have christened him Mr Turd.

    Just in honor of the upcoming movie you know(-:

    • Agreed. What needs to happen in that we need to start getting them out there in actual usage.

      Bud Light Peach-a-Rita is using http://.ws for their “Emoji Your Peach” campaign, which is pretty interesting and high profile. I’m not sure how many people emoji their peaches, but it’s a sign that creative people in the ad industry are starting to take notice.

      Here’s the question: will the ability to mix text and emoji be enough to start to push this out of url shortener-land to more mainstream usage?

    • haha… the forum system really didn’t like those emoji! So… we’ve got some work to do. A lot of this is happening naturally as backend systems get updated, move to UTF8. You get emoji support for free, which is nice.

      Anyway, for anyone who wants to emoji your peach: http://emojiyourpeach.com/

  7. To be able to mix emoji characters with letters within a domain is great! It opens up so many more possibilities from a marketing perspective, but a shame that only .ws supports this feature!
    Hieroglyph domain names can be registered in .com & that came as a surprise! I am fortunate to own a few single characters..
    Exciting times ahead for glyphs & emoji domain names!

    Regards Erwin
    http://.ws

  8. Please do not list names you are selling here. This is not an aftermarket website, and I personally do not buy anything but .com, so comments with “for sale” listings will continue to be marked as spam.

  9. As mentioned glyphs are already visible in the correct form on the likes of iphone etc.

    Downloading the Aegyptus glyph font will allow visiblility on most browsers. Makes glyphs in .com as opposed to .ws a much more interesting btranding/ resale option.

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