I registered a domain for this blog–not for any important reason other than it was available: ephemerality.net; and since domain names only become increasingly more rare, I was pleased to see that a single word–the titular word of this blog–was available. I hadn’t even thought to check its availability until now, assuming it had been taken.
Although .com certainly was taken, by a squatter. As in, it’s registered but no active site exists at that location, so it must be some guy who thought he’d hang onto it and wait for some company to offer him a big payout for it some day. But visiting the URL brings up a 404 error, so it’s routing traffic somewhere, just not somewhere with an HTTP site. Maybe he’s using it as a placeholder to a private server. Dunno.
In any case, I now own the .net version, which redirects here anyway so nothing amazing going on. At least it’s shorter to type.
–Simon