I was recently sent a document detailing all the international web domains by country. (Don’t ask why) So I am now the proud owner of a list that goes all the way from the Ascension Islands (.ac) to Zimbabwe (.zw). Reading through it gave me plenty of food for thought.

For instance, did you know that that Jersey (.je), Guernsey (.gg) and the Isle of Man (.im) have their own suffixes although they are part of the United Kingdom (.uk)? I certainly didn’t.

And did you know that .um was the domain suffix for United States Minor Outlying Islands? No? I’ve never heard of them either. The United States Minor Outlying Islands are in fact a group of islands, which includes Palmyra Atoll. None of the islands has any permanent residents - the population consisting of only temporarily stationed scientific and military personnel (316 at the last census!).

Looking at some of the more exotic and far-flung places in the directory reminded me of the island of Tuvalu and how its .tv suffix became quite a popular web domain for businesses in the world of television to adopt.

So how long before the following urls become sought after?

Cape Verde (.cv) – a must for recruitment consultants and headhunters

Croatia/Hrvatska (.hr) – for all Human Resources professionals

Guernsey (.gg) – for jockeys, horse breeders or bookmakers

Iraq (.iq) for Mensa members perhaps

Oman (.om) for practitioners of meditation

And finally Moldova (.md) for Managing Directors

More alternative uses for country code top-level domains will follow in a later blog. In the meantime, please send in any suggestions of your own.

Last year, web analytics company compete.com ranked the top 25 social networking sites by monthly visits.  A year later, they re-ranked those same sites to see how the positions had changed.  Facebook.com took the number one position, pushing myspace.com into second place.  Third in the list was Twitter.com, which jumped up a remarkable 19 places in 12 months.  Another high climber, was the business networking site and one of my favourites, Linked In.

In January 2009, in the US alone, facebook.com had nearly 69 million unique visitors to the site.  Worldwide, it has over 175 million active users and the fastest growing demographic is the over 30’s.  For marketers, the growth of social networks simply can’t be ignored.

How refreshing to receive the new Heineken commercial as a viral yesterday. It lifted my spirits during these bleak days, thanks tbwa neboko in the Netherlands, great work. 

Heineken walk-in fridge

I’m new to gaming and game culture but this struck a chord when I saw it yesterday. Here’s something I found on the BBC’s Click, and it’s purportedly an example of Web 2.0 gaming, with enhanced control for gamers including character and world building on a completely new level. The BBC’s Spencer Kelly takes a look at LittleBigPlanet, the latest online multi-player game for PlayStation 3 and creates his own level, with help from one of the game’s creators Kareem Ettouney.

View the BBC clip here and also if you have time; have a look at the Sony official website.