The road to top-level website development:the transformation from the first domain name!

Domain names are the real estate of the online world. Since the inception of the first domain name in 1985, with the widespread adoption of the global internet, domain names have become the digital business cards of companies.

As businesses adopt domain names, these names also contribute to the success of the companies. Every entrepreneur prefers to use a .com domain that aligns perfectly with their brand and is internationally recognized. However, many companies did not start with the well-known domain names they have today, often due to various reasons. Today, we'll take a look at the first domain names used by ten top global websites when they were founded!

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1. Instagram

The photo-sharing app Instagram, acquired by Facebook for $1 billion in 2012, initially did not have a web interface for quite some time. While its current official website domain is instagram.com, its first used domain was instagr.am. The .am domain is the country code top-level domain (ccTLD) for Armenia and was allocated for use in 1994.

2. Facebook

When the widely popular social network Facebook was quietly founded in February 2004, its founder Mark Zuckerberg could only secure the domain thefacebook.com. It wasn't until later that he spent $200,000 to acquire facebook.com, which became the primary domain. Facebook further solidified its brand by acquiring domain names like face.com and fb.com (acquired for $8.5 million), and it currently holds at least 439 domain names. Its market value has reached $693.985 billion.

3. Buffer

Among recent startups, Buffer.com is another website that upgraded its domain name. Buffer initially used bffr.com as its domain but later switched to bufferapp.com. The current domain, Buffer.com, was acquired after two years and a $600,000 investment. Buffer.com is more concise and better represents the Buffer company, with broader applications.

4. Twitter

Twitter, the well-known social media and microblogging service founded in 2006, initially used the domain twttr.com. In 2006, it spent $7,500 to acquire Twitter.com as its brand domain. Twitter also acquired t.co for use as a URL shortening service. Today, Twitter.com is one of the most visited websites in the social media world, with a market value of $27.784 billion, but you can still access it via Twttr.com.

5. Google

Google, the world's largest search engine company, started as a research project by Stanford University students Sergey Brin and Larry Page. In its early stages, it used the subdomain google.stanford.edu. In 1997, it purchased google.com, which became its primary domain the following year. Today, Google's market value has reached $1.02 trillion, and it owns a vast portfolio of domain names, including premium domains like g.cn, gmail.com, yt.com (for YouTube), and many more.

6. Alibaba

Alibaba, founded by Jack Ma and 17 others in 1999, initially faced domain name challenges. Jack Ma's preferred domain, alibaba.com, was already registered by a Canadian. As a result, he initially registered "alibaba-online.com" and, within a month, "alibabaonline.com." The latter became the official website, known as "阿里巴巴" in Chinese. However, Jack Ma remained passionate about alibaba.com and eventually purchased it for $10,000. Alibaba's market value now stands at $691.284 billion, and it holds a substantial portfolio of domain names, including alipay.com, taobao.com, and many others.

7. NBC News

NBC News, a prominent news program produced by the National Broadcasting Company (NBC) in the United States, initially used MSNBC.com when it was jointly funded by Microsoft and General Electric in 1996. After ending its partnership with Microsoft in 2012, NBC started using NBCNews.com and currently uses the shorter three-letter domain NBC.com. MSNBC.com now serves as the website for MSNBC cable news.

8. PayPal

PayPal, founded in 1999 by Max Levchin and Peter Thiel, initially operated as part of X.com before becoming an independent company with the domain paypal.com due to concerns about X.com's mysterious and potentially inappropriate nature. X.com was later repurchased by Elon Musk for a rumored $8 million. PayPal was acquired by eBay for $1.5 billion in 2002, became independent in 2015, and is now publicly traded on NASDAQ with a market value of $213.192 billion. PayPal holds multiple domain names, including brand-related ones like beibao.com and anfutong.com.

9. Amazon

Amazon, the largest online retailer in the United States, was founded by Jeff Bezos. When starting the company, Bezos used various domain names like Awake.com, Browse.com, Bookmall.com, and Relentless.com. However, when he saw Amazon.com, a name based on the world's longest river and starting with the letter "A," he decided to use it as the brand domain. Amazon's market value now stands at $1.54 trillion, and it owns a vast domain portfolio, including aws.com for its Amazon Web Services (AWS) division.

10. eBay

eBay, an online auction and shopping website, was founded in 1995 by Pierre Omidyar under the name AuctionWeb. The first domain purchased was AuctionWeb.com. Later, it transitioned to the four-letter domain ebay.com. eBay now has a market value of $40.945 billion, with over 147 million registered users from 29 countries and millions of products sold daily across thousands of categories. eBay also owns a large portfolio of domain names, including shopping.com, half.com, cote.com, and tlb.com.

Domain names are crucial for businesses. Looking at the domain name evolution of these top websites, it's clear that many companies didn't start with ideal domain names. However, their continuous upgrades and investments in domain names played a significant role in their current global success.