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X.com is Twitter, but what are [a-z].com?

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Re: X.com is Twitter, but what are [a-z].com?

#91

Post by da_chicken »

FartyMcFarter wrote: post #66
sublinear wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> X.com is pretty stupid as well, you can't meaningfully use it as a brand. Just "x" alone isn't really the brand. It's more like "x.com" is the canonical name. From that perspective, "x" or "x.com" is about as good as brand recognition can get. It's simple and perfectly descriptive of an "everything app" and payment processing business.

> It's more like "x.com" is the canonical name. It sounds like a porn website. I don't think most business owners would want this as their brand, but I guess Elon is special in this way as well.

Elon is special in a lot of ways.

Twitter had one of the strongest brands. Not in social media, not in technology, just one of the strongest brands period. Do people realize how rare and difficult that is to do? That little blue bird was everywhere. Elon just gave it up. Flushed it away.

Kind of like those advertising contracts.

Re: X.com is Twitter, but what are [a-z].com?

#92

Post by eli »

sublinear wrote: post #37
mrweasel wrote: post #5

One letter domains has the same issue as many of the gTLDs, they aren't particularly useful in terms of brand recognition. X.com is pretty stupid as well, you can't meaningfully use it as a brand. Take bob.builders, it's a perfectly valid domain, but if you see it on the back of a van, even if it's www.bob.builders, it's not recognizably as a website. www.b.com has the exact same problem, even x.com / www.x.com is ju…

> X.com is pretty stupid as well, you can't meaningfully use it as a brand. Just "x" alone isn't really the brand. It's more like "x.com" is the canonical name. From that perspective, "x" or "x.com" is about as good as brand recognition can get. It's simple and perfectly descriptive of an "everything app" and payment processing business.

It's not though. Musk writes it as a single stylized letter and the company name is "X Corp" not "X.com"

Re: X.com is Twitter, but what are [a-z].com?

#93

Post by eli »

amadeuspagel wrote: post #20
eli wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People just google “bob builder” anyway. Domain doesn’t matter so much.

And then your competitor advertises for "bob builder". And then you start whining about how mean google is, even though you were the one who decided to use google as a domain resolution service, which it was not intended for. There's a reason amazon decided to refer to itself as amazon.com until everyone got it, and that probably saves them billions in google ads per year.

Yeah, that sucks but it is the current state of the world. Trademark registration would help.

You're going to walk around calling your local construction company "bobbuilder.com"? That's a weird vibe for a business that takes place offline. And it doesn't matter because people will still google "bob builder"

> There's a reason amazon decided to refer to itself as amazon.com until everyone got it, and that probably saves them billions in google ads per year.

OK but they still buy all the top ad spots for "amazon" and "amazon.com"

Re: X.com is Twitter, but what are [a-z].com?

#95

Post by n3150n »

7ewis wrote: post #71
sublinear wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> X.com is pretty stupid as well, you can't meaningfully use it as a brand. Just "x" alone isn't really the brand. It's more like "x.com" is the canonical name. From that perspective, "x" or "x.com" is about as good as brand recognition can get. It's simple and perfectly descriptive of an "everything app" and payment processing business.

I personally like brand names that _look_ like they could be words, but aren't like Spotify, Twitter, Monzo, Reddit, Google etc. Believe they need to be short and easy to Google even if you don't know how to spell them (not saying the above brand names are perfect). Find it annoying hearing Xero having to be spelt out on the radio to stop people going to zero.com. Not particularly a fan of combining two English words…

Twitter is a word in itself, though, both a verb and a noun [0].

[0] https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/twitter

Re: X.com is Twitter, but what are [a-z].com?

#96

Post by kalaksi »

swozey wrote: post #55
extheat wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, I disagree with the idea that one letter domains look wrong. Especially with the many new TLDs, more often than not short URL services use single character domains. Take g.co for example—google uses that in ads everywhere. It’s modern equivalent of calling a short code phone number unrecognizable. But yet most people still instinctively know how to text them for information. However for really esoteric TLDs, I ca…

When I see a t.co (x.co now?) link I have literally no idea where it's going to take me at all and I am far, far less likely to click one of them knowing that it's a url shortener. This is such a common thing that there are browser extensions/slack(discord/teams/etc) options to unfurl urls.

Exactly. I think it also teaches people to trust all kinds of obscure domains instead of trusting only well known ones. It might be even easier to write the little bit longer domain as you don't have to double check correct spelling. Browser will likely fill it in anyway. I just don't see any real benefit.

Re: X.com is Twitter, but what are [a-z].com?

#97

Post by kaba0 »

da_chicken wrote: post #91
FartyMcFarter wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's more like "x.com" is the canonical name. It sounds like a porn website. I don't think most business owners would want this as their brand, but I guess Elon is special in this way as well.

Elon is special in a lot of ways. Twitter had one of the strongest brands. Not in social media, not in technology, just one of the strongest brands period . Do people realize how rare and difficult that is to do? That little blue bird was everywhere. Elon just gave it up. Flushed it away. Kind of like those advertising contracts.

It is indeed his biggest mismanagement, but it’s a serious competition.

At least it broke the image of ‘CEOs must be intelligent’, that was wide spread in certain circles.

Re: X.com is Twitter, but what are [a-z].com?

#98

Post by kaba0 »

mrweasel wrote: post #61
herbst wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

X.com probably makes sense in the assumption that he turns Twitter into a WeChat clone as kinda 'everything app' which would obviously fail. But as 'everything app' X is kinda a strong brand IMO.

If "X" can transition to a WeChat clone, then maybe, until then it's a shitty brand. The media always needs to present is as: "The social media platform X", "X, formerly Twitter" or "Elon Musks X". The last one seems to indicate the Elon Musk is a bigger brand than "X".

Everything is a bigger brand than X, it is absolutely insanely stupid.
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