.sns
Is .sns a real TLD? Who’s applying to run it?
.sns is not contested. One application for it is on ICANN’s Reveal Day list, as of 7 October 2026. It is XServer.
A short, meaningful string for social-media businesses in East Asia, but most will still pick .com or a local domain first.
social-media marketing agencies, creators, community apps and SNS-tool vendors, mainly in markets where "SNS" is the everyday word for social media
The 2012 applications making the most similar bet. Chosen by AI from every string in that round, without being told what happened to any of them.
Same bet exactly — own the generic label for the social-networking service category and rent primary identity to platforms, communities and people's public profiles; the only difference is that one spells the category out and the other uses the initialism the same category is known by in East Asian markets.
Also a plain generic for a consumer online-communication service category sold as identity to apps and communities rather than to one company, so it needs the same thing to be true — that people accept a service-category word as the place their social presence lives — but it is a word everyone decodes rather than a trade initialism.
The nearest 2012 case of the same word-kind bet: a three-letter industry initialism for an emerging internet-service category, legible to the trade and opaque to consumers, wagered on becoming the namespace that category's operators put their identity on.
What a .sns domain is
.sns is not a TLD yet. It is a string on our record of the ICANN 2026 new gTLD round, filed under AI & tech. One application for it is on ICANN’s Reveal Day list.
Is the .sns domain extension real yet?
.sns is not yet a domain extension you can register: nothing resolves under it, and no registrar sells names in it. It is a string applicants have put forward in the ICANN 2026 new gTLD round, the process that decides whether it becomes one.
When can you buy a .sns domain?
You can’t yet. ICANN publishes every applied-for string on Reveal Day, 7 October 2026 at 18:00 UTC. A .sns name can only be registered after that, once the string is delegated and its registry opens. Last round's closest parallel to .sns was .social, delegated on 14 January 2014.
Is .sns a real TLD?
Not yet. .sns is not in the DNS root, so nothing resolves under it. It’s here because .sns is on ICANN’s Reveal Day list of applied-for strings. Every entry on this page links to its source.
- XServer · first recordedICANN
“ASL2693T-T37161 · Agador Slip, LLC · primary · contention set 2026-247 ISL2626T-T66950 · Innovation Service Limited · primary · contention set 2026-247 XI2694T-T10138 · XRegistry Incorporated · replacement string of .geek · Deactivated”ICANN
- Band chosen: 30-49, usable but limited. "SNS" (social networking service) is the ordinary term for social media in Japan and Korea, so the string carries real descriptive meaning for a large, active industry segment there: SNS marketing agencies, SNS consultants, creator tooling, community apps. That gives it a plausible volume-and-price registration base and lifts it above the 10-29 vanity band, where a string has no working meaning for any buyer group. It stays below the 50-69 niche band because genuine primary-identity use looks thin: the social platforms themselves are a handful of global brands with established domains, and a new community or creator project in these markets would more likely reach for .com, .jp, .kr or .app than explain a .sns address; by analogy, .social and .chat (flagged as analogy) drew steady but modest registrations and little aftermarket, and a regional-abbreviation string is likely to do no better outside its home markets, where "SNS" reads as an ambiguous acronym. The single confirmed standard application on the record (XServer / XRegistry Incorporated) means no contention, which says nothing about demand either way; registrar-channel reach in Japan would be the main adoption lever, but I have no verified fact on that. Main market uncertainty: whether Japanese and Korean small businesses and creators adopt new gTLDs at all at meaningful rates, versus staying on ccTLDs and .com; by analogy, city TLDs like .tokyo showed that regional uptake can be real but price-driven. Figures on registration volumes, prices or aftermarket sales are unknown.