Why are there so many year-themed websites?

July 28, 2007 12:53 PM

Themed years: From now until 2099?

It seems like there are a lot of websites related to particular years, e.g. Liverpool '08, Towards 2010.org.

Here's a brief list of some year-themed websites:

www.highland2007.com
www.liverpool08.com
scotlandistheplace.org.uk (website for 'The Year of Homecoming' in 2009)
towards2010.org
essex2011.org.uk
london2012.com
destiny2013.org
glasgow2014.com
towards2015.co.uk
....
http://www.yoursay2017.org.uk/
http://www.2018england.co.uk/
http://desktop2019.co.uk/
www.2020casting.com
...
www.equality2025.co.uk
....

In November '06, I used google to search for websites for all the years between 2000 and 2030; I could only find websites up to about 2015. I tried again yesterday and I found websites for all the years up to 2030 and beyond.

Could someone please explain why there are so many of these year themed websites?

It almost looks as if the odd numbered years are supposed to be 'good' and the even numbered years are 'bad' (e.g. the Liverpool 08 logo looks like it's decayed; the highlands '07 website is more colorful).

Any thoughts on the above would be appreciated.

posted by Tnuocca to society & culture (9 comments total)

Not all of these are necessarily years. In particular, 2020casting.com sounds like it could be a reference to 20/20 vision.
posted by nebulawindphone at 1:45 PM on July 28, 2007

Most of the sites you mention explain their own existance; liverpool08.com is because Liverpool is the European Capital of Culture for 2008, glasgow2014.com is in support of Glasgow's bid for the 2014 commonwealth games...

It may seem obvious, but I'm going to say that there are "so many" of these year-themed urls because there are "so many" organizations looking forward to things happening in future years.

Maybe I don't get your question, though.

These domains that feature years may be getting more common simply because a lot of domain names are already taken, and adding numbers into the mix increases one's chances of finding an available domain.
posted by chudmonkey at 1:53 PM on July 28, 2007

I'm sure they're mostly for events that are planned or could be planned in those cities for those years. Major conventions are scheduled years in advance, and so are things like the Olympics. Even if they haven't made a successful bid for an event yet, cities would probably want to nail down any possible websites as far in advance as they could so they wouldn't have to buy them from a squatter later.
posted by MsMolly at 1:55 PM on July 28, 2007

Could someone please explain why there are so many of these year themed websites?

Are you wondering why are there lots of things that have a year component in their name or why people register domain names related to them? Presumably the range of such things is wide and domain name registration just reflects what's going on in the real world.

Although linguistically speaking, would it seem there are more things being named with numbers lately? People used to say something like "the Olympics of 1932" and now they say "The 1996 Summer Olympics" as if the date were part of the noun phrase rather than a descriptor. Interesting. Related to the software development industry's habits as in "Windows 2000" or "Web 2.0"? Chicken? Egg?
posted by scheptech at 2:36 PM on July 28, 2007

Agree with Chudmonkey. Plus it's worth remembering that most people will never see that entire list - for me, Liverpool 08 (which is where I come from) and London 2012 (which is where I live) are the only that I can think of, off the top of my head.
posted by adrianhon at 2:52 PM on July 28, 2007

Not quite an answer to your question, but: your question seems to imply that those websites have come up recently, since you mention that you didn't find them seven or eight months ago. However, the Internet Archive Wayback Machine shows that these websites, the more 'future' ones too, were active back then as well. So maybe either you or Google have changed search (or indexing) tactics?
posted by Ms. Next at 3:51 PM on July 28, 2007

From the looks of it, some of those sites listed above (like the Desktop 2019 one) are only coincidentally linked to the given year. Here are some reasons one might have a site with a date like that in the URL:

-Perhaps the number has some personal significance

-Perhaps the number is part of a date from a movie they like

-Perhaps the number is some other obscure pop culture reference

-Perhaps they're domain-squatting, buying a cheap domain and putting up nominal content now with the hope that someday (2019?) they'll be able to sell the domain for a lot more than they've been paying for it.
posted by limeonaire at 5:21 PM on July 28, 2007

Because if that's what your poster says in big letters/numbers, it's a lot easier for the person to go home and remember that URL.
posted by rhoticity at 9:57 PM on July 28, 2007

Because people in the marketing department dont understand the concept of the internet being forever and ask you to register domain names that will be obsolete come January 1.

/bitter.
posted by softlord at 4:42 AM on July 29, 2007