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I discourage it. People will always look for you (and worse still, send you mail) at the dot com. And there are lots of decent dot com names still available.

by pg 17y ago

decadentcactus 17y ago
Wouldn't that also depend on the target audience of the site? If a site was targeted at the same people that use HN for example, I doubt they'd have a problem with the site using a .net
- davidw 17y ago
  What if they only sort of peripherally remember the name? It's about finding it, rather than using it.
  - zepolen 17y ago
    Most people (even geeks) use google to find a site they don't remember the exact url for, and google does a very good job at finding that url, regardless if there is a .com with the same name. Eg. searching for 'python' gets you python.org as 1st result. You don't want to go to the .com
    - davidw 17y ago
      Because a ton of people link to python.org. Your startup most likely will not have that advantage. Also, I wonder how many people (say, someone's boss), heard about this cool Python language and just tried python.com. Oops.
    - asmosoinio 17y ago
      Single data point: I had not seen python.com before this, and have been programming in Python for a few years. Somehow I also remember it's php.ne, not .com, even though I haven't visited that site so much lately. But both of these were already an established internet brand when I started using them.
    - deleted 17y ago
      [deleted]
- access_denied 17y ago
  Well, Gruber has daringfireball.net and .com
driax 17y ago
It depends on who your audience is. Few of the python programmers I know realize that python.com is a porn site. Remembering that it is python.org a not .com is not that hard, and if in doubt most people use Google anyway. EDIT: okay, maybe not that unbeknown given the amount of comments below.
- icey 17y ago
  I used to work with a lady who I thought should learn Python. I was very explicit in telling her that it was python.ORG. Guess who got a bunch of dirty looks the next day for sending a co-worker to a porn site?
jeromec 17y ago
I agree with pg. If your site is targeted to mainstream, as opposed to geeks or early adopters, you would have to fight really hard to go against default mind-share people will have for dot com. Remember, many people still don't know "what is a browser?" http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o4MwTvtyrUQ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o4MwTvtyrUQ

I discourage it. People will always look for you (and worse still, send you mail) at the dot com. And there are lots of decent dot com names still available.

by pg 17y ago

I discourage it. People will always look for you (and worse still, send you mail) at the dot com. And there are lots of decent dot com names still available.

decadentcactus 17y ago

Wouldn't that also depend on the target audience of the site? If a site was targeted at the same people that use HN for example, I doubt they'd have a problem with the site using a .net

davidw 17y ago
What if they only sort of peripherally remember the name? It's about finding it, rather than using it.
- zepolen 17y ago
  Most people (even geeks) use google to find a site they don't remember the exact url for, and google does a very good job at finding that url, regardless if there is a .com with the same name. Eg. searching for 'python' gets you python.org as 1st result. You don't want to go to the .com
  - davidw 17y ago
    Because a ton of people link to python.org. Your startup most likely will not have that advantage. Also, I wonder how many people (say, someone's boss), heard about this cool Python language and just tried python.com. Oops.
  - asmosoinio 17y ago
    Single data point: I had not seen python.com before this, and have been programming in Python for a few years. Somehow I also remember it's php.ne, not .com, even though I haven't visited that site so much lately. But both of these were already an established internet brand when I started using them.
  - deleted 17y ago
    [deleted]
access_denied 17y ago
Well, Gruber has daringfireball.net and .com

driax 17y ago

It depends on who your audience is. Few of the python programmers I know realize that python.com is a porn site. Remembering that it is python.org a not .com is not that hard, and if in doubt most people use Google anyway. EDIT: okay, maybe not that unbeknown given the amount of comments below.

icey 17y ago
I used to work with a lady who I thought should learn Python. I was very explicit in telling her that it was python.ORG. Guess who got a bunch of dirty looks the next day for sending a co-worker to a porn site?

jeromec 17y ago

I agree with pg. If your site is targeted to mainstream, as opposed to geeks or early adopters, you would have to fight really hard to go against default mind-share people will have for dot com. Remember, many people still don't know "what is a browser?" http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o4MwTvtyrUQ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o4MwTvtyrUQ