Soviet Union .SU Rises in Popularity
The Soviet Union may have collapsed some 16 years ago, but you would never guess it from the rising popularity of its country-code domain name.

The .su domain has been continually rising, with registrations increasing 45 percent this year alone. A small but growing community of bloggers, entrepreneurs and communists have kept the .su domain alive and thriving.

The popularity of the domain can partly be attributed to ongoing Russian nostalgia for the Soviet empire. Nashi, translated as "Ours," is a pro-Kremlin youth group known for their protests against Kremlin critics. The group regularly praises President Vladimir Putin at nashi.su.

Many Web entrepreneurs are scooping up trademarked and other recognizable names that have already been registered under the more popular .com, .net and .org domains, such as ford.su, apple.su and microsoft.su.

Though many of these entrepreneurs are registering these domains for legitimate reasons, such as having an easy-to-remember name for a personal email address, others have registered the domains for financial gain. High-profile addresses such as ussr.su, stalin.su and kgb.su are demanding a resell price of $30,000 each.