Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Beware cutesy two-letter TLDs for your domain name

blorn.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

21–30 of 44 posts

Re: Beware cutesy two-letter TLDs for your domain name

#21

Post by etiam »

stickfigure wrote: post #2

As of this moment, our site is still down. Any suggestions regarding how to deal with this situation? Update: Over 8 hours of downtime later, dns is delegating properly again. Voost is back up.

It's a long shot, but you could try calling the CEO, Jon Karlung Phone: +46 (0)761 110160 (this is a cell phone, so there is a chance he's not away from it even though the time is closing in on 1 AM over here)

Alternatively, same reasoning with the CEO of Bahnhof Unipessoal Lda: Johnny Aspman Phone: +46 (0) 76 111 01 02

I hope you will get help sorting this out as soon as possible, but I would add that unless you signed up for 24/7 duty service, I don't think you are being quite fair to the provider; so far you are getting exactly what they declared you would: Phone support 08:00-18:00 CEST, weekdays.

Good luck!

Re: Beware cutesy two-letter TLDs for your domain name

#22

Post by stickfigure »

tomku wrote: post #12
dasil003 wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think this problem is rapidly diminishing over time as people just google everything.

It's still better to have the .com anyways, because then you aren't potentially competing on SEO with someone else with the same brand name and a "better" domain to use it with. Like it or not, .com domains are the de facto namespace for consumer-facing products and having the .com for your brand up for sale or already taken is just asking for problems.

Ultimately it's a choice between:

* Getting an inferior .com domain/brand

* Getting a better brand with a wacky .com name ("getxyz.com")

* Getting a better brand with an "exotic" extension

* Spending a ton of money

The exotic extension seemed the least sucky option at the time. I'm not sure that "voostapp.com" (or whatnot) is more easily found than "voo.st", it's still a trip to google.

The big surprise (to me) is that NICs can fail so spectacularly. I really didn't expect this. It might have changed our decision a year ago... but we're pretty much stuck with it now.

Re: Beware cutesy two-letter TLDs for your domain name

#24

Post by skeletonjelly »

seanconaty wrote: post #19

No matter what happens .com will always be King.

There's going to be a point where it'll be impossible for new businesses to choose a domain name that isn't abstracted so far away from their business name as all the domains are taken. I'm curious as to the what the system will be like in 5 years. Surely .com can't be king forever?

Re: Beware cutesy two-letter TLDs for your domain name

#26

Post by gdsf34dfsg »

freshhawk wrote: post #14
TazeTSchnitzel wrote: post #7

Depends which. My site's at .me, which, being well hyped and having over 100,000 domains, is probably not going to go down soon.

That is definitely different. I understand the catchy headline and the grouping together of newer tlds but it's unfair. The headline should have read "do at least a modicum of research into a company you are about to tie your entire brand to before you do so". This doesn't apply to a lot of "cutesy" two letter tlds and it does apply to a lot of things that aren't tlds (whatever fly-by-night/about to get aqui-hired SA…

How would one do this research?

It's very hard to understand how services operate until there is a failure?

Re: Beware cutesy two-letter TLDs for your domain name

#29

Post by davesmylie »

I was reading this about an hour ago thinking that I was glad I had gone for the .com and that this sort of thing wouldn't effect me.

However, I just found out that my mail provider (25mail.st) is failing for the same reason. My app now has no incoming/outgoing email. This is isn't the end of the world, but a bit frustrating none-the-less.

I guess the lesson here is to beware of both cutesy two-letter TLD's for your domain name and cutesy two-letter TLD's the in the domain names of the mission critical services which you subscribe to.

Re: Beware cutesy two-letter TLDs for your domain name

#30

Post by bigiain »

tomku wrote: post #12
dasil003 wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think this problem is rapidly diminishing over time as people just google everything.

It's still better to have the .com anyways, because then you aren't potentially competing on SEO with someone else with the same brand name and a "better" domain to use it with. Like it or not, .com domains are the de facto namespace for consumer-facing products and having the .com for your brand up for sale or already taken is just asking for problems.

This is still true today, but has been becoming less and less true for years now. The .com namespace just isn't big enough.

Today we're mostly just dealing with it - I suspect I'm somewhat more protected here in Australia than most US based people - many of my clients are fine with a $foo.com.au domain even if the $foo.com isn't available, so long as $foo.com isn't already a direct competitor.

The pool of available .com domains just isn't going to support all the things people want to do with domain names in the short and medium term future. Something is going to have to change - and whatever that change is, it's somehow going to have to avoid the problem of all the .com domain owners immediately registering the .newtld version or fraudulently/incorrectly using trademark law to muscle out new businesses.

Post reply on HN