Facebook registers mysterious fBoriGin domain names

Facebook registered a curious bunch of domain names yesterday with the moniker fBoriGin. It's unclear what the domain names, spotted by blog ubergizmo, will be used for. When asked by The Register about the - among others - .com, .org, .net and .co.uk registration of fBoriGin, the world's biggest social network declined to …

[Anonymous Coward]

oriGin

Their own brand of Gin, of course.

... or perhaps the dictionary on domaintools just getting it a bit odd

[JakeyC]

Why the caps?

Why capitalize it as fBoriGin?

Surely it's FbOrigin or FBorigin?

Or have I missed something subtle?!

[Sandtreader]

domains are case insensitive

DNS is case-insensitive and the fborigin.com whois entry is lowercase like every other domain. Where does this bizarre casing idea come from?

[Shonko Kid]

Conspiracy theories

it's clearly 'fb origin' so maybe a site detailing how Schmuckerberg got the idea in the first place, the capitals give us the clue; B and G? who could that possibly be? None other than Bill Gates himself, he did afterall invent the interweb!

[Zaphod.Beeblebrox]

BG? No, AG!

No, no, no - you've got it all wrong, 'twas AlGore what invented teh interwebs!

[Cave Dweller]

Misreading

Every time I look at FBoriGin I see the word "Borg". Time to assimilate?

[Chris Phillips]

Just dull cdn stuff?

In my experience, obscure names including "origin" often relates to "not via the CDN". Stabbing in the dark I know, but not nearly as much as you already are!

[Anonymous Coward]

The "strange" capitalization may be because they are wanting trademark protection for the name .... you can't trademark a word but you can trademark a logo and (as has been the case in companies I've worked for) by always capitalizing the company name in a way that resembles the logo is thought to help to gain protection for the name via inference from the trademarked logo ... i.e. you are implicitly saying "this isn't an ordinary name ... its a ASCII representation of a trademarked logo".

[Anonymous Coward]

All hail the Ori

you will follow the teachings of facebook origin or perish!

[Anonymous Coward]

G is for Genealogy

G is for Genealogy

[semprance]

Clearly...

... it is an anagram of FROIBING

[Anonymous Coward]

No its an anagram of Groin fib

[Bruno Girin]

"Does the word "origin" hint that Facebook could be developing a site intended for users who want to build up family trees or track down long-lost relatives?"

I read an article recently that an interview of someone at FB saying that's exactly what they want to do. If I could remember where I read that, I'd post a link but unfortunately I can't.

[ElReg!comments!Pierre]

fBoriGin

"Facebook could be developing a site intended for users who want to build up family trees or track down long-lost relatives?"

That, or a website for people who like dull cocktails.

[Wilhelm Lindt]

DNStards

I don't think The Register has published a single article on DNS that wasn't embarrassingly ill-informed. Add this one to the list. Is domaintools.com the only way El Reg knows how to look up a domain? Their capitalization is dictionary-based and has nothing to do with the actual registration.

[houst0n]

FBorigin

Or is it that facebook use akamai and 'origin' is the name akamai use to refer to your source datacenter(s)?

[James 100]

CDN

Sounds very much like a CDN origin host to me. Proof of the pudding? Well, if they're using 'fborigin' to host the origin content, you'd expect them to use something like 'fbcdn' for the CDN-fronted access, i.e. the hostname end-users actually fetch stuff from - and sure enough, their Akamai distributions are on hostnames like b.static.ak.fbcdn.net.

Next up, the mysteries of dOwnLoad.microsoft.com, where Windows Service Packs and other goodies come from ...

[cordwainer 1]

besides...

facebook started a genealogy app in 2007, Family Builder - it was purchased by intelius Nov 2011, renamed Live Family. sounds like FB's done w/ origins of that kind.

i keep misreading fborigin as fboring (yawn...who cares about the other i)