Remember the Shel Puppet? Loren “138Media” Feldman created an instant hit by mimicking Media-expert Shel Israel’s video show. The imitation, i.e. the puppet received sponsorhip while the original series was floundering. They irony of all was that Loren owned the domain shelisrael.com, which was simply available for purchase due to an oversight by its rightful owner: the real Shel forgot to register it.
Not owning your own domain can be inconvenient for individuals, but it’s a real blunder for businesses. Marketing 101:own your own domain. No exceptions. Not the *.net *.us *.biz or whatever garden-variety you can find, but the *.com version.
Startups who don’t have a lot vested in a particular brand have a choice: they should pick a name with available *.com name. Last year I picked on a few TechCrunch 50 presenters with the wrong names:
- http://www.fairsoftware.net easily confused with fairsoftware.com, also in the software business.
- http://www.icharts.net/ does not own the *.com version – but at least icharts.com does not appear to be a real business, just a parked domain whose owner is probably holding out for a high price.
- http://tingz.net/ is in the same shoes, the *.com version is owned by what appears to be an individual.
- alfabetic.net appears the be one startup that smartened up: the *.net version is no longer available, they are now @ http://www.alfabetic.com/ (hey, does it mean somebody actually listens?
)
But I don’t want to pick on TC50 presenters, here’s another example: I recently wanted to look up Paymo, whose CEO has pinged me a few times (Ben will likely review them soon). What a surprise! I thought they were in the time tracking & billing business, but in fact they are a mobile payments solution. And not exactly a small startup, either. How could they have morphed so far? Ouch… they are @ paymo.biz, not paymo.com.
This begs for the question: what’s the value of a catchy name (one that even describes what you do) when the primary domain is owned by another company in a similar business?
The above examples have one thing in common: they picked the wrong name. They all launched out of nowhere, with zero brand equity, so they could have picked one that was available, or easy to purchase(as alfabetic apparently did.)
More established businesses don’t have that luxury. They are in the enviable position of having built a strong brand, so it would seem reasonable that they protect it.
Jive Software has been around for a decade or so, doing OK as a relatively unknown Open Source company. Then along came Enterprise 2.0, they rode a good wave, hired Marketing Maven Sam Lawrence, and overnight they became THE E20 Brand. But there’s a small problem: the Brand that became famous is Jive, and they don’t own that domain. About 6k visitors a month see this:
Jive.com
Nothing to see here—move along now.
Apparently someone holds the jive.com domain hostage. But the logo does not say Jive Software, it says Jive. And the “hostage” site has traffic comparable to real companies with real products:
They don’t own jive.net or jive.org either – one has to remember to type Jive Software. A blunder, especially from a company that developed a name for cutting edge marketing.
Note: I am not trying to pick on Jive (although they are big boys, can take it). Other companies with even bigger brands blunder, too.
When Dell recently launched their luxury Adamo line, they launched it as a separate brand (just like Lexus is not Toyota, Acura is not Honda…etc). Except they did not acquire Adamo.com. They launched the product @ AdamobyDell.com (quite a mouthful) and only when half the blogosphere ridiculed them for being so cheap did they purchase Adamo.com, which had long been a parked domain @ Tucows.
Others are smarter. There is a reason Mercury Interactive paid $1M for mercury.com, Apple coughed up meg $$$ for iPhone.com, or Nissan bought the simply elegant z.com (hey, that should be my domain)
They all seem to know Marketing 101: own your own domain. Pick the right name while you have the chance, or purchase it if you already have a brand to protect.
Update: Several commenters (Alain, Jan) below make a good point about the decreasing importance of domain names, and I agree to an extent. Clearly, user behavior is is shifting from directly typing URLs to using Google search and hitting the releavant result. This is partly due to hard-to-remember URLs in the first place … but trends in technology make it more comfortable, too. For example Google’s Chrome browser no longer has a separate URL and Search box ( anyone wonders why?) so it’s actually a whole lot easier to type in a partial match then accept the right entry then dealing with www, punctiation, dashes, slashes..etc. (Althought I would still directly type z.com.)
I think the near-future proliferation of domain types will lead to search becoming the predominant way to finding a website. But chaning habits may take a few years. In the meatime domains are still important.
You’re bang on with this post. You’d think more people would get this. That said, the stinky thing is when you know what to do but can’t afford to buy the domain. Then when you can afford it, the person won’t give it up.
Regardless, it’s sage advice. Great post.
I don’t think Jive has ever been an open source company any more than other proprietary software companies that build products using open source and contribute back to the open source projects. Am I wrong?
@Sam, I guess the problem is by the time you can afford it you are a much better known brand, which the domain-squatter is quite aware of, so will drive the price higher up. The squeeze is on…
@Roebot, I don’t know… it certainly was not the point I wanted to make.. emphasis on unknown, rather than on OS.
This is why I bought domain names for my kids as soon as they were born!
PBWorks? Wow, noone likes poor Wiki anymore…
🙂
Hi,
I agree in principle with your point (I run one of the companies you mention). But to be fair (no pun intended), offer a better solution instead of simply making fun of us, and we’ll respect you even more!
Should we have gone for axuilea.com, a name that doesn’t mean anything, but is available, or stick to what we thought was a memorable name? A lot of people just type “fairsoftware” in Google and find us immediately (we are #1 of course).
So what is your final advice?
Alan,
I think I offered a solution here and in the first post last year: pick an available name early enough when it does not matter, since you have no brand equity yet. Something tells me the choices were a little more than just fairsoftware.net or axuilea.com 🙂
And yes, you are #1, and who is #2? fairsoftware.com. Same for “fair software”.
I somehow agree with you Zoli, however our situation was special. We couldn’t afford to buy off the http://www.paymo.com domain name that was taken hostage.
A year after we launched our time tracking service Paymo.biz, Paymo (the mobile payment company) was formed and they probably said.. oh well this sounds nice, let’s rip it off ’cause paymo.biz is too small to fight us and best of all they are in Europe let’s get it.
At that point it was too late for us to give up the Paymo name because it was pretty relevant in our niche.
Domain names are not that important as they used to be in the past. I think it’s more important for users to find your site based on what they are searching rather by domain name.
@Jan,
I did not realize paymo.com launched after you did – I thought they were the incumbants. Then who owned the domain before you took paymo.biz?
But all this means is shifting you from the “very bad, taking a name owned by relevant similar business” category into the “poor choice, taking a name without available domain” one 🙂
Seriously, paymo is cute, but I would have found another name.
As for search vs. domain name, sure, you have a point – will update my post in a few minutes.
Well the .biz and .us looked good to us and we
liked the name a lot, tracking your time you get
paid more 🙂