As HN: Startup name — dot com or not dot com?
As everyone knows, it is incredibly difficult to get a good .com name. Unbelievably difficult. The amount of names of new startups which all sound a little bit as dog names proves it. And the reason for this is obvious — everyone wants a short, pronounceable and a remarkable name... as a .com domain. However, what I cannot understand is why on earth are .com names so important? I mean, there should be a real reason why startups pick names like reddit, okcupid, gowalla, tumblr, quora, etc, instead of going with simpler and more prominent name in another domains? Since a few years there is a tendency of picking domains like .ly, .me, .io, etc. but I cannot think of a single successful project with a non dot com domain. I rather see another cases, like if a project gets popular it buys a better name (dropbox, facebook, delicious).
If the argument is that .com is kind of a "default" domain and everybody will type "name.com", then I would disagree, since no one is typing a url by hand. We use google, bookmarks, links, so the domain itself seems to be quite irrelevant. Maybe it is the appearance that matters? Or the ease of pronunciation? But the latter obviously suffers for names like flickr and tumblr.
What do you think? Why is e.g. roollr.com better than roller.at?
51 comments
[ 2.9 ms ] story [ 105 ms ] threadWorth bearing in mind even if you're not thinking of the very small minority who type in a domain name and just hit CTRL+Enter to autocomplete to www.domain.com
Domain hacks are also difficult to remember and type. Devs will get it, understanding that the dot comes before the last two or three letters, and that as the last two or three letters identifies a country .tld whether it is 2 or 3 letters. But end users... imagine how many are getting it wrong and letting Google intercept. This may be acceptable to you, but it's hardly a sleek and uninterrupted experience for the end user.
Drop.io was acquired (http://techcrunch.com/2010/10/29/facebook-acquires-drop-io-n...), and bit.ly seems to be doing well.
Can we name any other prominent examples of non-dot-com stardom? The poster child of the cutesy URL movement, delicio.us, dropped the idea halfway through its rise to, um, near-death and relative obscurity at the hands of Yahoo. So I'm not sure they're a very promising example. Any other big stars? What am I missing?
If your success and customer aquisition is going to be more viral in nature, spreading through invitations/Facebook, or if it is dependant on SEO for traffic, then I don't think it matters as much.
I'm (someday) going to launch my "November" Startup sprint project and went with a non-.com url (http://www.rankoro.us/) but, just to be safe, I reserved http://www.rankorous.com as well.
I know a couple startups that assumed they didn't need the .com that ended up paying a fortune later to get it because their brand was established and it was too late to change. roollr.com actually seems like a decent domain, just be prepared for the misspellings and make sure there is not porn at rollr.com, rooller.com etc...
Is this true?
It's no longer a novelty factor.
Just go with dotcom. Don't waste another minute.
Having a .com similarly makes word-of-mouth referrals easier.
BTW, I found an available .com that might be up your alley. Email me if you like.
I'd be wary of .ly domains though.. http://benmetcalfe.com/blog/2010/10/the-ly-domain-space-to-b...
(Having typed it enough times now, I do remember - but still every time the way I remember is by thinking of how I got it wrong in the past).
That said, I don't see any difference, personally, between .com/.org/.net - remembering the extension is no problem, it's only when the extension becomes a part of the site name that sometimes confuses my memory.
Sure, an extra 4-5 letters to type in the domain name, but at least it's more memorable than the awful and impossible-to-spell-other-than-letter-by-letter 4-5 letter animal noises. (i.e. How many times do you want to say "No, you leave out the 'e'")
Memorable: 7 letters or less is best, 9 is still manageable, and anything more than 9 calls for misspelling, too long to type, etc. I personally believe that a 2-word 12 characters name is better than a 5 letter weirdo name or random characters, but I haven't seen a study to support that.
SEO: the URL shown in google SERPs plays in a role in clickthrough rate. A shorter domain name means more of the URL will be shown, as many services limits the maximum number of characters shown.
Social sharing: same as above, short and meaningful domain names are more likely to get clicks and be shared again than a URL that passed through bit.ly and friends. Doesn't apply as much to twitter, but think email, facebook, linkedin.
I actually wrote a tool to solve this problem (it finds short, available .coms using real words):
http://impossibility.org/
Ironically, it's a .org :)
Basically, the reason you want a .com is so people will know you're a website. It's instantly parsable. "I work for Shoes.com" vs "I work for Shoe.ly... it's a website that sells shoes". It greatly simplifies advertising, press coverage, word of mouth, etc.
Pair up these three and I think we're all set: http://impossibility.org/ https://domize.com/ http://nxdom.com/
I recently found and registered a 6 letter .com domain on godaddy: http://Shaloc.com, the site is mainly for Location Sharing, SHAare-LOCation = SHALOC, this is one way to find .com domains, the word may not mean anything, but based on what the site does it can be made easy to remember.
.COM is definitely better and easy to tell others about it.
Suggestion: make a "random" mode (ie, random participle and location for each of the 5 suggestions) and default it.
My take on the .com vs. not: do both (ie, shoely.com and shoe.ly)... not like it's a significant cost. The .com is essential because some browsers still auto-default that extension.
I type urls by hand and do CTRL+Return to add the .com and get there.
But even if everyone is using Google, a unique name like "roollr" will certainly be easier to find than "roller" that will exist in many tlds. How will your users remember that you're the .at one, and that .com or .it have nothing to do with you?
It's so much easier for everyone to use a .com
(BTW I don't know if you chose roller as a generic example, but roller.com is apparently for sale at sedo).
The techie audience should have problem remember a non .com, and be comfortable accessing it, other may not.
If you're planning on doing non-online advertising then its more important to have a .com, as people will have to remember the url and type it in at a later date. If you plan on doing stuff online then people click on stuff and it becomes less important.
A domain name needs to fit the web site, and your approach to attracting visitors and maintaining relationships with them. But the original post never described these aspects of the business/service being considered.
I wrote an article about this yesterday: http://domainjig.com/ideas/great-domain-names.html in preparation for the public launch of a new ... domain name suggestion tool! I'm not quite ready to post it to the main HN page (still working out a few to-do's), but for those of you wanting a sneak peek, here it is: http://domainjig.com
Bitly does the exact same thing, http://bitly.com works just as well as http://bit.ly
I'm curious though, henrik: why 301 player.io to playerio.com when your brand (per the logo) is "player.io"? I'm curious as it seems a little counter-intuitive.
Honestly, I don't think it matters very much.
http://www.wordoids.com
http://www.domize.com
be sure to double check wordoids' results, as it sometimes report taken domains as free.
good luck!
Of course, here's a perfect example of a novelty-name recollection failure.
Redirect rollerat.com to roller.at and be done with it. It just takes a little extra time to make sure you can get both domains.
pro: I was speaking with a UX designer recently who mentioned his parents didn't know what a url was, they simply typed the website they were interested in into the google search bar in their webbrowser. in this situation as long as you are first in google, you are good to go.
con: if someone happens to know what a URL is they will probably type <name>.com first.
I think with a purely technical audience, you have much more freedom with the TLD. However with anything less, you may struggle. Remember even popular non-.com's like Wikipedia are probably accessed much more via Google than by typing wikipedia.org.
When I want to go to Google, I type in "google", with no "www" or "com". Safari automatically interprets this as "www.google.com", although I realize that Chrome can't do this (as it interprets it as a search query rather than a url).
However, that is one big disadvantage of not having a dot com url nevertheless. Just something to think about.