But phone numbers are treated as relatively private, so they don't really face this problem. The few that aren't intended to be private, and meant to be broadcast, go out of their way to procure "memorable" phone numbers (such as, say, 1-800-333-4444 vs. 1-800-293-3841, the "vanity domains" of phone numbers, so that you can see it on a billboard and still remember it when you get home). You don't however normally broadcast individual people's phone numbers (like tweeting your friends number and saying "my buddy just said the funniest thing, call him here: 111-3333"). On the other hand, sharing is one of the primary purposes of for links and URLs. In this IP universe, the tweet is now "My buddy just wrote the best thing https://[2001:db8:1234:5678:9abc:def0:1234:5678]/blah". If this only looks reasonable to people that happen to have already visited this site and recorded it in their address book, then I'm worried it will quickly lose favor vs. "traditional domains". I will admit that I am not super familiar with the goals of the small web, and perhaps they want websites to behave more like IRC rooms, but I don't think sharing new content to a new audiences is against the the principles of the original web (given the emphasis on links). Again though, I am totally willing to believe that I am misunderstanding the goals here.