Since it’s inception, over 587,000 .ME domains have been registered, and in the past couple of years  .ME domains have been touted as the new savvy social domain extension to have. But does this personalised sufix live up to its hype?

According to Predrag Lesic, CEO of the .ME Registry, the idea behind the .ME extension is “an alternative to .com by people who want to show the world that they are a person, not a corporation.” This statement comes as part of an announcement for the You’re Not a .com, You’re a .ME” social media contest, being run from Sept 17-21. by the .ME registry. All those who tweet once a day about the competition will win a free .Me domain – not quite the sign of a domain extension in high demand…

The .ME extension is a viable option for bloggers and hobbyists looking to register their own personal domain name without having to shed out big money for the .COM on the resale market, and also for businesses creating sister sites to leverage satellite campaigns. But in terms of marketability, .COM undoubtedly offers a more professional polish.

Dot ME is by nature best-suited to personalization, with “me” being the operative world – as opposed to “we”, “us”, or “our”, yet this hasn’t limited businesses, partnerships and entrepreneurs seeing big potential in the extension. Meet.Me sold to the owners of MeetMe.Com for $450,000 (more than likely a defensive strategy to protect the brand rather than an expansion initiative) and there have been many other notable .ME sales:

List of .ME Sales

• insure.me – $68,005
• date.me – $70,000
• love.me – $32,500
• hug.me – $20,000
• cruise.me – $28,500
• air.me – $10,099
• malta.me – $8,100
• legal.me – $8,100
• restaurant.me – $6,618
• files.me – $5,500
• japan.me – $5,269
• oil.me – $5,000

That said, for all its personalization prowess and a few decent sales, we are yet to see a breakthrough social network utilizing the .Me extension – perhaps Pinterest might have worked better as Pin.Me. And this is a casing point, .ME works well where “me” is the operative word; where the consumer is the product; Find.Me, Marry.Me, Sponsor.Me, etc, but doesn’t seem to have taken flight where people aren’t the commodity or key focus.

As the list above demonstrates, .ME has potential at the premium end as a worthy investment, but doesn’t have the same broad appeal and high value as .COM, or where applicable, .ORG. It’s more trendy, jokey and fun than business-like, which of course has its advantages depending on your intention.

The value of .ME domain names is hindered by search engine performance, too. How often do you see a high-ranking .ME site? Not too often. This suggests the domain is better placed for type-in traffic and link traffic right now, which is pretty much the way the web is headed in right now.

All said and done,  for a suffix that was originally created as the country code for Montenegro, not to complement the social media explosion it now leverages off, .ME has made a valuable impact on the domain name world, and is likely to see slow growth.