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Why do people use .ly anyway? It's not like there aren't other two-letter domains out there.
by atgm 16y ago
Why do people use .ly anyway? It's not like there aren't other two-letter domains out there.
- endtime 16y agoProbably at first because it was a common English suffix and/or had a lot of short, readable domains available. Now it's trendy on top of that.
- burgerbrain 16y agoIt's some dumb marketing gimmick. The idea basically seems to boil down to "only old foggies use the major gTLDs these days, lets be hip and make our company name an adjective that is also our URL".
- timerickson 16y agoIt's more than a gimmick. A recognizable and memorable URL has proven to be extremely beneficial to new startups. Memorable .com addresses are becoming endangered, or very very expensive.
- burgerbrain 16y agoTo this day I have to doublecheck myself on where the '.'s are places in "del.icio.us" (in fact, it abandoning this URL some time ago). Now, "amazon.com"? Absolutely no worries there.
- carlygeehr 16y agobecause how else would my entire url be just my first name (car.ly)? true, probably a mis-use... but really fun, in a super nerdy kind of way.
- zach 16y agoIt's a domain fad that (as far as I can tell) started with Writely becoming popular five years ago. Here's a rundown of recent domain fads as I recall them: 2003: del.icio.us con.fuses.us 2004: 37signals helps create 43 Things and Jay-Z has "99 Problems" -- coincidence? I think not. 2005: Flickr makes a splash and gets acquired, penultimate vowels no longr requird 2006: Writely, the superbly adverbly named webapp, goes Googly 2007: Xobni presses rewind (okay, this one never took off) 2008: Adverbs come on stronger with .ly 2009: URL shorteners go.to 6 characters or less I can't actually think of a domain name fad that hit last year. Any suggestions?