April 18, 2008 -- (WEB HOST INDUSTRY REVIEW) -- The Soviet Union may have collapsed some 16 years ago, but you would never guess it from the rising popularity of its country-code domain name.
The .su domain has been continually rising, with registrations increasing 45 percent this year alone. A small but growing community of bloggers, entrepreneurs and communists have kept the .su domain alive and thriving.
The popularity of the domain can partly be attributed to ongoing Russian nostalgia for the Soviet empire. Nashi, translated as "Ours," is a pro-Kremlin youth group known for their protests against Kremlin critics. The group regularly praises President Vladimir Putin at nashi.su.
Many Web entrepreneurs are scooping up trademarked and other recognizable names that have already been registered under the more popular .com, .net and .org domains, such as ford.su, apple.su and microsoft.su.
Though many of these entrepreneurs are registering these domains for legitimate reasons, such as having an easy-to-remember name for a personal email address, others have registered the domains for financial gain. High-profile addresses such as ussr.su, stalin.su and kgb.su are demanding a resell price of $30,000 each.
Despite the rise in the .su name, the former Soviet republics have seen a relatively low Internet penetration when compared to other countries in the world, save the more tech-savvy Baltic state of Estonia. Only 27 percent of Russian adults use the Internet, while just 12 percent of the adults use it on any given day, according to Russian non-profit research group, the Public Opinion Foundation (english.fom.ru).
While some Internet entrepreneurs are passionate about the .su domain, others have criticized it, calling it nothing more than an archaic reminder of the past that does not deserve the same status as other country-code domains, such as .ru for Russia, or .uk for the United Kingdom.
