The Problem with Vanity TLDs (2011) • Hacker News Board

Re: The Problem with Vanity TLDs (2011)

#41

Post by marc_io » Sat, Jan 01, 2022, 7:10 PM UTC

sofixa wrote: post #35

acheron wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m never going to remember a domain with a silly tld. I don’t necessarily think badly of the company when I see a link to one (I mostly think “fuck you ICANN”) but it is anti-memorable.

Oh please. A Cloud Guru's acloud.guru is awesome and easy to remember, and there are probably tons of other examples.

Notion.so is another example. The gTLD in this case could even be considered part or the brand, as notion.com points to it.

Re: The Problem with Vanity TLDs (2011)

#42

Post by dqv » Sat, Jan 01, 2022, 7:13 PM UTC

sofixa wrote: post #35

acheron wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m never going to remember a domain with a silly tld. I don’t necessarily think badly of the company when I see a link to one (I mostly think “fuck you ICANN”) but it is anti-memorable.

Oh please. A Cloud Guru's acloud.guru is awesome and easy to remember, and there are probably tons of other examples.

And a lot of the .com domain space is polluted either with people sitting on domains and wanting to sell them for thousands or just leaving it unregisterable. So you have this choice of either creating a really long .com, or a shorter .other

Granted, the domain name system is not ideal, but adding new TLDs, however long, is a better solution than dealing with having to name your company so you can get a .com that matches it.

Re: The Problem with Vanity TLDs (2011)

#43

Post by meesterdude » Sat, Jan 01, 2022, 7:13 PM UTC

mavhc wrote: post #24

Whoever invented selling 1 row in a database for massive amounts of money per year was a genius

it's better than that: they're RENTING database rows.

Re: The Problem with Vanity TLDs (2011)

#44

Post by easrng » Sat, Jan 01, 2022, 7:17 PM UTC

marc_io wrote: post #41

sofixa wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh please. A Cloud Guru's acloud.guru is awesome and easy to remember, and there are probably tons of other examples.

Notion.so is another example. The gTLD in this case could even be considered part or the brand, as notion.com points to it.

.so is a ccTLD, not a gTLD.

Re: The Problem with Vanity TLDs (2011)

#45

Post by andreareina » Sat, Jan 01, 2022, 7:18 PM UTC

qbasic_forever wrote: post #40

mrweasel wrote: post #38

The real issue with the vanity TLDs, and many of the newer ones in general, is that they have zero recognition. They are most worthless. You can slap a joehardware.com on the back of your van, or a local TLD, and people will know that it's the address of your website. Now do the same with joehardware.builders, people have no glue as to what that might be. It doesn't even help to write www.joehardware.builders, that s…

Paint a QR code on the side of the van instead, I bet it would get more engagement even with a .com address.

QR code requires you to scan it in that moment. A human-readable (and -recognizable) URL stands a chance at being remembered at a later date.

Re: The Problem with Vanity TLDs (2011)

#46

Post by easrng » Sat, Jan 01, 2022, 7:20 PM UTC

dqv wrote: post #23

Sorry, but *looks at my nails* .com is a boomer TLD, it's passé. Do you really want a domain from last century? Or do you want an exotic .asia? A cool .club? A forward looking .future? Or even joining the ranks of the celebrity media with a stylish... .xn--45q11c? The answer is clear, if you want to stay in the past, then go with .com, but the .future is in vanity TLDs. For more information, check out my website http…

.xn--45q11c is actually .八卦 (According to Google translate, it means Gossip)

Re: The Problem with Vanity TLDs (2011)

#47

Post by TheDong » Sat, Jan 01, 2022, 7:25 PM UTC

7steps2much wrote: post #25

jefftk wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Where is 2K a limit these days?

Chromium based browsers! > The Google Chrome browser supports a maximum length of a web page URL of 2 MB (2048 characters) in size. taken from [0]. Do note that this is a restriction created by the browser developers. In theory a URL can be of arbitrary length. Some browsers (like Firefox) do comply with this, though they might now show the full URL to the user, cutting it off after a certain number of characters. [0…

Experimentally, you can easily verify that 2MB is the actual limit, not 2048 characters.

For example, the following domain renders just fine, despite being ~2076 characters long: https://postman-echo.com/get?foo1=aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa...

See the upstream chromium docs: https://chromium.googlesource.com/chromium/src/+/refs/heads/...

I don't think adding ~10 or so characters to the TLD meaningfully impacts this limit.

Re: The Problem with Vanity TLDs (2011)

#48

Post by s_dev » Sat, Jan 01, 2022, 7:26 PM UTC

mrweasel wrote: post #38

The real issue with the vanity TLDs, and many of the newer ones in general, is that they have zero recognition. They are most worthless. You can slap a joehardware.com on the back of your van, or a local TLD, and people will know that it's the address of your website. Now do the same with joehardware.builders, people have no glue as to what that might be. It doesn't even help to write www.joehardware.builders, that s…

You could write www.joehardware.builders to make it clearer.

Re: The Problem with Vanity TLDs (2011)

#49

Post by mrweasel » Sat, Jan 01, 2022, 7:29 PM UTC

s_dev wrote: post #48

mrweasel wrote: post #38

The real issue with the vanity TLDs, and many of the newer ones in general, is that they have zero recognition. They are most worthless. You can slap a joehardware.com on the back of your van, or a local TLD, and people will know that it's the address of your website. Now do the same with joehardware.builders, people have no glue as to what that might be. It doesn't even help to write www.joehardware.builders, that s…

You could write www.joehardware.builders to make it clearer.

I suggested that, but as I wrote, that's actually more confusing if you don't know that there's a .builders TLD (in fact there's also a .builder).

Re: The Problem with Vanity TLDs (2011)

#50

Post by mrweasel » Sat, Jan 01, 2022, 7:31 PM UTC

qbasic_forever wrote: post #40

mrweasel wrote: post #38

The real issue with the vanity TLDs, and many of the newer ones in general, is that they have zero recognition. They are most worthless. You can slap a joehardware.com on the back of your van, or a local TLD, and people will know that it's the address of your website. Now do the same with joehardware.builders, people have no glue as to what that might be. It doesn't even help to write www.joehardware.builders, that s…

Paint a QR code on the side of the van instead, I bet it would get more engagement even with a .com address.

Sadly I have no way of tracking that, because I would make the opposite bet. My guess is that 90+% of QR codes, that people aren't forced to scan somehow, are never used.