.st is the Internet

Internet

The Internet is a global system of interconnected computer networks that use the standard Internet protocol suite to serve billions of users worldwide...

 country code

Country code

Country codes are short alphabetic or numeric geographical codes developed to represent countries and dependent areas, for use in data processing and communications. Several different systems have been developed to do this. The best known of these is ISO 3166-1...

 top-level domain

Top-level domain

A top-level domain is one of the domains at the highest level in the hierarchical Domain Name System of the Internet. The top-level domain names are installed in the root zone of the name space. For all domains in lower levels, it is the last part of the domain name, that is, the last label of a...

 (ccTLD) for São Tomé and Príncipe

São Tomé and Príncipe

São Tomé and Príncipe, officially the Democratic Republic of São Tomé and Príncipe, is a Portuguese-speaking island nation in the Gulf of Guinea, off the western equatorial coast of Central Africa. It consists of two islands: São Tomé and Príncipe, located about apart and about , respectively, off...

. It is also being marketed worldwide as an abbreviation for various things.

Second-level domains

Registrations are taken directly at the second level, but some names have been reserved for use in specialized third-level registrations (though not all of these are actually in use at present):

• nic.st: Official ST domain registry
• gov.st: Government of São Tomé and Príncipe
• saotome.st: Island of São Tomé
• principe.st: Island of Principe
• consulado.st: São Tomé and Príncipe consulates
• embaixada.st: São Tomé and Príncipe embassies
• org.st, edu.st, net.st, com.st, store.st, mil.st, co.st

Other uses

The .st domain is being marketed as a general-use domain, with a number of meanings suggested including the abbreviation of "street", short for "Star Trek

Star Trek

Star Trek is an American science fiction entertainment franchise created by Gene Roddenberry. The core of Star Trek is its six television series: The Original Series, The Animated Series, The Next Generation, Deep Space Nine, Voyager, and Enterprise...

" and more. The .st domain is also commonly used to create domain names that spell words ending in st such as "[bur.st]".

Smalltalk

The Smalltalk programming language community also has an affiliation with the .st extension referring to the Smalltalk

Smalltalk

Smalltalk is an object-oriented, dynamically typed, reflective programming language. Smalltalk was created as the language to underpin the "new world" of computing exemplified by "human–computer symbiosis." It was designed and created in part for educational use, more so for constructionist...

 programming language. Both "The World of Smalltalk" (www.world.st) as well as the Seaside (www.seaside.st) web application framework use .st for their domain name.

Styria

The state of Styria, in Austria

Austria

Austria , officially the Republic of Austria , is a landlocked country of roughly 8.4 million people in Central Europe. It is bordered by the Czech Republic and Germany to the north, Slovakia and Hungary to the east, Slovenia and Italy to the south, and Switzerland and Liechtenstein to the...

, has ST as its unofficial but common abbreviation. Therefore, the .st extension is used by some small businesses located in Styria, despite Austria's own .at

.at

.at is the Internet country code top-level domain for Austria. It is administered by .The .at top-level domain has a number of second-level domains...

. Also some registrations in South Tyrol

South Tyrol

South Tyrol , also known by its Italian name Alto Adige, is an autonomous province in northern Italy. It is one of the two autonomous provinces that make up the autonomous region of Trentino-Alto Adige/Südtirol. The province has an area of and a total population of more than 500,000 inhabitants...

, an autonomous, chiefly German-speaking Italian

Italy

Italy , officially the Italian Republic languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Italy's official name is as follows:;;;;;;;;), is a unitary parliamentary republic in South-Central Europe. To the north it borders France, Switzerland, Austria and...

 province, use the .st extension to abbreviate the German

German language

German is a West Germanic language, related to and classified alongside English and Dutch. With an estimated 90 – 98 million native speakers, German is one of the world's major languages and is the most widely-spoken first language in the European Union....

 name of Südtirol in opposition to Italy's .it

.it

.it is the Internet country code top-level domain for Italy.Because it is also the English word it, and many words end with -it, this can commonly used in the construction of domain hacks, such as play.it , write.it or swimsu.it.There are a number of reserved second-level domain names, for...

.

Global Hosted Operating System

The Global Hosted Operating System (G.ho.st) uses the .st domain to allow use of a domain name of G.ho.st for their online virtual operating system.

Washington Post URL shortener

The Washington Post uses .st as part of their domain http://wapo.st. Their .st URL serves as a redirect which they use to lead readers to various articles on their site. This is most useful when the length of a URL counts, such as when tweeting an article.
The Economist

The Economist

The Economist is an English-language weekly news and international affairs publication owned by The Economist Newspaper Ltd. and edited in offices in the City of Westminster, London, England. Continuous publication began under founder James Wilson in September 1843...

does the same, under econ.st.

External links

• World.st: The World Of Smalltalk - A collection of Smalltalk-related information
• Seaside.st: Seaside Web Application Framework
• IANA .st whois information
• domain registration website for .st domains