Re: UKNM: are .com domains necessary for startups?

[Jeremy Spiller]

I agree. IMHO, the quicker we move on from this daft dot com mindset thing

the better. The only reason it seems to persist is that a lot of people are

making a lot of money out of it, (keep the supply down, keep the demand

high).


For years now there has been talk of increasing the number of TLDs to

include such things as dot shop, dot biz, dot whateveryouwant. In years to

come I'm sure we'll giggle behind our hands and look on it the same way we

do at bleeding in medicine or closer to home having to name files with eight

letters only ie with embarassment.


If your company is unlucky enough to have a common name like Granada and you

didn't get your dot com it's not that you weren't quick enough off the mark

but rather you were probably just unlucky in having a common name.


What about the sorry fate of moneyworld.com and many other dotcoms that were

legitimately shang-hai'd by others for whatever reason? There are tens of

thousands of other similar examples.


It's interesting to note how the film companies are dealing with things. I

couldn't help noticing on a poster the other day a URL that was

whatever-themovie.com What the heck are they going to do when the sequel to

this movie comes out?


This whole domain name malarkey is already resulting in completely mad

goings on and if the so called cachet of having a dot com was completely

removed by flooding the whole thing with dozens of tlds then we won't need

the likes of

even more bizarre goings on like ireallylove.it (Italy), doyouknowtheway.to

(Tonga) ilovetrademarks.tm (Turkmenistan). or my personal favourite

slowlyslow.ly (Libyan Arab Jamahiriya). (No I don't know whether they're

registered or not, get 'em if you want).


It's all crazy, and if we're smart enough to only take 24 years to get from

the introduction of the internet to the web, that graphical medium we all

know and love, (heh, heh!) and have computers for thirty or forty years

before working out that it might be a good idea for them to all be connected

then heck, surely we can work this one out in the next twenty years or so.


Jem

-------------------------------------------------------------


Jeremy Spiller

t: 01903 883426

f: 01903 885726

m: 0958 403503

e:

jembluemoon [dot] ftech [dot] co [dot] uk

icq: 93799090

yac: 07092045125

-------------------------------------------------------------


>

> But how about from Jo Public's point of view? Does he or she even

understand what a .com or a .co.uk or a .net means? Does anyone apart from

us, the marketing department and the VC's really care whether the suffix is

.com or .vom?

>

> Sure, I advise people to get the .com and .co.uk versions of a name (with

> dashed equivalents too if the domain name is more than one word) but I'm

not entirely sure whether it's the right advice or just incredibly

obsessive.

>

> There are many, many users out there who don't know that you can type a

URL directly into a web browser and go straight there ...

>

> Andy



~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

 looking for useful books about the new media biz?

 check out the UKNM books page for some suggestions:

 http://www.chinwag.com/uk-netmarketing/books.shtml

 Email suggestions to:

helpchinwag [dot] com

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

  To unsubscribe or change your list settings go to

http://www.chinwag.com/uk-netmarketing or

helpchinwag [dot] com