6 ms·

I think this is honestly less about the notoriety of .com, and more about the lack of affordable and available domains for startups to purchase. Got a five lett

I think this is honestly less about the notoriety of .com, and more about the lack of affordable and available domains for startups to purchase. Got a five letter named startup? That’ll cost you tens of thousands of dollars, IF you can even get it. Meanwhile there’s hundreds of gTLDs that you can buy a domain on for $10-$30/yr.

prepend 4y ago
Meanwhile my four letter domain, lwei.com, gets no offers and is appraised at like $1000. There’s still stuff available for reasonable prices but it’s just a lot of work so it’s easier to get some random tld.
- tabtab 4y ago
  That's Iwei robbery!
  - haliskerbas 4y ago
    "our company is called Iwei, and you can reach us at Lwei dot com"
- paxys 4y ago
  Well sure you can also run a random string generator and get a short .com TLD, but that's not the point.
  - Kiro 4y ago
    Pretty sure all 4 and 5 letter .com domains have been taken since at least a decade.
    - echelon 4y ago
      And very few of them will ever serve anything useful.
    - anamexis 4y ago
      4 letter ones are all taken, but there are still 5 letter domains available. I wanted a short domain for personal use and bought xlmpq.com
      - nickstinemates 4y ago
        A fellow ascii art enjoyer :)
    - davchana 4y ago
      So many random 5 letter, letters only domains are available. If you add numbers & hypen to mix, it baloons to thousands.
  - ZainRiz 4y ago
    Today I realized how xkcd prob got it's name
    - allknowingfrog 4y ago
      Possibly, although the official explanation is that it's "just a word with no phonetic pronunciation". There's a "What does XKCD stand for?" section on the About page. https://xkcd.com/about/ https://xkcd.com/about/
      - lIl-IIIl 4y ago
        Randall wanted a unique short string associated with all his work. That way he could Google "xkcd" and find everything he ever did online. I believe he had a script that generated all possible 4-letter combinations and filtered out ones with any search results, and settled on "xkcd". But he became a victim of his own success when the comic became so popular and "xkcd" is now synonymous with the comic. Source: talk by Randall, might be this one but I'm not sure: https://youtu.be/zJOS0sV2a24 https://youtu.be/zJOS0sV2a24.
    - dhosek 4y ago
      There’s a faq on this on the site (find it yourself). It was created as an unpronounceable “acronym” (although it doen’t stand for anything) and the domain came later when Randall was still an unknown. It’s old enough that a lot of “normal” domain names were still available, but the name itself was one of the jokes.
  - davchana 4y ago
    No 3 letter.com domain is available to register (all combinations are registered, can only be bought). 4 letter mixed numbers letters are sure available. I am not sure of 4 letters only is available. 5 letters only sure is available.
    - bombcar 4y ago
      I bought a three letter domain at one of the original TLDs for $3k or so, they can be surprisingly reasonable depending on your use case.
- remram 4y ago
  Appraised by whom? What's a domain's value if no one wants to pay for it?
ren_engineer 4y ago
this, .com domains are an ego thing more than anything at this point. Why waste valuable money on a vanity thing rather than trying to fuel growth? I guess in the worst case somebody could try to trick potential customers but otherwise as an early startup you have bigger things to worry about than a domain name
- croutonwagon 4y ago
  They are artificially necessary in some cases. I have a personal .com and a gTLD based domain. THis is mostly to retain control of mailflow (I use workspace but can always move it, and have in the past) The number of services/online forms that wont accept a .email domain is still very high. I would imagine at a business level this would be equally difficult, even if its just for B2B type transactions/relationships.
  - BiteCode_dev 4y ago
    Can confirm. My .email is regularly reject even by my own country administration.
  - input_sh 4y ago
    That is indeed true for gTLDs (I've experienced it with .online), but from my experience never the case for ccTLDs. Maybe .tk that is (or was) handed out for free, but I never had any problem with ccTLDs I've owned (.me, .dj, .sh). So, .com isn't the only silver bullet, and from what I can tell from that chart, only .app and .tech may be somewhat affected.
    - davchana 4y ago
      .in is rejected by discover for email address, its a cctld. .us was fine.
    - croutonwagon 4y ago
      interesting. Just registered a couple ccTLD's. I have a .com. But its super long and I dont really like it. Its also the primary domain in workspace since i have had it since gsuite was free but before they closed the free tier registration ~2012. Now that I'm a paid user (by forced attrition) im looking to honestly just migrate the TLD of the workspace to something less cumbersome to type. .email is really the primary at this point.
htag 4y ago
Having a dotcom is a signal of the organization's wealth. If your company is worth $3B, and your cash position is good, spending 0.01% of your valuation on a dotcom ($300k) is a no brainer. It might add to your legitimacy and prestige (even if marginally) and it's an asset that will most likely increase in value over time.
- diceduckmonk 4y ago
  > an asset that will most likely increase in value over time. This is actually a myth. See the changing of hands of sex.com. Also, Domain names are being less important as users stay within apps / content platforms like FB, Instagram and TikTok. Also Google Search and soon ChatGPT.
  - Salgat 4y ago
    Reminds me of nissan.com, which is now nearly worthless because Nissan Motors doesn't care anymore.
    - HideousKojima 4y ago
      Or steam.com
    - davchana 4y ago
      I thought that was what Nissan (the domain owner,not the motor company) wanted, that motor company leaves him alone, & don't bother him while he uses his lastname domain.
      - Salgat 4y ago
        If I remember right he owned a computer company he used the domain for, but he pretty much devoted his domain to his anti-nissan campaign until he passed away.
  - htag 4y ago
    The future value of domain names aren't certain, but I think they are a fairly safe bet. They are viewed in to email addresses, search results, web address bars, and hyperlinks. I don't think a platform is going to usurp these. Walled gardens have been attempting to do this since AOL keywords.
lostmsu 4y ago
To prove your point I got borg.games for $20/yr for my p2p cloud gaming startup yesterday. Although lots of other good names were "premium" and costed upwards of $5000.
- remram 4y ago
  borggames.com is available and will cost you $10/yr.
pentagrama 4y ago
I also believe that changing your domain after you build an user base is challenging from a UX perspective. Many users have saved their credentials on their browser's password manager, and if the domain changes, the auto fill didn't work anymore. Courious about why Notion owns the .com but still using the .so.

prepend 4y ago

Meanwhile my four letter domain, lwei.com, gets no offers and is appraised at like $1000. There’s still stuff available for reasonable prices but it’s just a lot of work so it’s easier to get some random tld.

tabtab 4y ago
That's Iwei robbery!
- haliskerbas 4y ago
  "our company is called Iwei, and you can reach us at Lwei dot com"
paxys 4y ago
Well sure you can also run a random string generator and get a short .com TLD, but that's not the point.
- Kiro 4y ago
  Pretty sure all 4 and 5 letter .com domains have been taken since at least a decade.
  - echelon 4y ago
    And very few of them will ever serve anything useful.
  - anamexis 4y ago
    4 letter ones are all taken, but there are still 5 letter domains available. I wanted a short domain for personal use and bought xlmpq.com
    - nickstinemates 4y ago
      A fellow ascii art enjoyer :)
  - davchana 4y ago
    So many random 5 letter, letters only domains are available. If you add numbers & hypen to mix, it baloons to thousands.
- ZainRiz 4y ago
  Today I realized how xkcd prob got it's name
  - allknowingfrog 4y ago
    Possibly, although the official explanation is that it's "just a word with no phonetic pronunciation". There's a "What does XKCD stand for?" section on the About page. https://xkcd.com/about/ https://xkcd.com/about/
    - lIl-IIIl 4y ago
      Randall wanted a unique short string associated with all his work. That way he could Google "xkcd" and find everything he ever did online. I believe he had a script that generated all possible 4-letter combinations and filtered out ones with any search results, and settled on "xkcd". But he became a victim of his own success when the comic became so popular and "xkcd" is now synonymous with the comic. Source: talk by Randall, might be this one but I'm not sure: https://youtu.be/zJOS0sV2a24 https://youtu.be/zJOS0sV2a24.
  - dhosek 4y ago
    There’s a faq on this on the site (find it yourself). It was created as an unpronounceable “acronym” (although it doen’t stand for anything) and the domain came later when Randall was still an unknown. It’s old enough that a lot of “normal” domain names were still available, but the name itself was one of the jokes.
- davchana 4y ago
  No 3 letter.com domain is available to register (all combinations are registered, can only be bought). 4 letter mixed numbers letters are sure available. I am not sure of 4 letters only is available. 5 letters only sure is available.
  - bombcar 4y ago
    I bought a three letter domain at one of the original TLDs for $3k or so, they can be surprisingly reasonable depending on your use case.
remram 4y ago
Appraised by whom? What's a domain's value if no one wants to pay for it?

ren_engineer 4y ago

this, .com domains are an ego thing more than anything at this point. Why waste valuable money on a vanity thing rather than trying to fuel growth? I guess in the worst case somebody could try to trick potential customers but otherwise as an early startup you have bigger things to worry about than a domain name

croutonwagon 4y ago
They are artificially necessary in some cases. I have a personal .com and a gTLD based domain. THis is mostly to retain control of mailflow (I use workspace but can always move it, and have in the past) The number of services/online forms that wont accept a .email domain is still very high. I would imagine at a business level this would be equally difficult, even if its just for B2B type transactions/relationships.
- BiteCode_dev 4y ago
  Can confirm. My .email is regularly reject even by my own country administration.
- input_sh 4y ago
  That is indeed true for gTLDs (I've experienced it with .online), but from my experience never the case for ccTLDs. Maybe .tk that is (or was) handed out for free, but I never had any problem with ccTLDs I've owned (.me, .dj, .sh). So, .com isn't the only silver bullet, and from what I can tell from that chart, only .app and .tech may be somewhat affected.
  - davchana 4y ago
    .in is rejected by discover for email address, its a cctld. .us was fine.
  - croutonwagon 4y ago
    interesting. Just registered a couple ccTLD's. I have a .com. But its super long and I dont really like it. Its also the primary domain in workspace since i have had it since gsuite was free but before they closed the free tier registration ~2012. Now that I'm a paid user (by forced attrition) im looking to honestly just migrate the TLD of the workspace to something less cumbersome to type. .email is really the primary at this point.

htag 4y ago

Having a dotcom is a signal of the organization's wealth. If your company is worth $3B, and your cash position is good, spending 0.01% of your valuation on a dotcom ($300k) is a no brainer. It might add to your legitimacy and prestige (even if marginally) and it's an asset that will most likely increase in value over time.

diceduckmonk 4y ago
> an asset that will most likely increase in value over time. This is actually a myth. See the changing of hands of sex.com. Also, Domain names are being less important as users stay within apps / content platforms like FB, Instagram and TikTok. Also Google Search and soon ChatGPT.
- Salgat 4y ago
  Reminds me of nissan.com, which is now nearly worthless because Nissan Motors doesn't care anymore.
  - HideousKojima 4y ago
    Or steam.com
  - davchana 4y ago
    I thought that was what Nissan (the domain owner,not the motor company) wanted, that motor company leaves him alone, & don't bother him while he uses his lastname domain.
    - Salgat 4y ago
      If I remember right he owned a computer company he used the domain for, but he pretty much devoted his domain to his anti-nissan campaign until he passed away.
- htag 4y ago
  The future value of domain names aren't certain, but I think they are a fairly safe bet. They are viewed in to email addresses, search results, web address bars, and hyperlinks. I don't think a platform is going to usurp these. Walled gardens have been attempting to do this since AOL keywords.

lostmsu 4y ago

To prove your point I got borg.games for $20/yr for my p2p cloud gaming startup yesterday. Although lots of other good names were "premium" and costed upwards of $5000.

remram 4y ago
borggames.com is available and will cost you $10/yr.

pentagrama 4y ago

I also believe that changing your domain after you build an user base is challenging from a UX perspective. Many users have saved their credentials on their browser's password manager, and if the domain changes, the auto fill didn't work anymore. Courious about why Notion owns the .com but still using the .so.