Ask HN: Has anyone followed Paul Graham's “Change your name” advice with success

#1

Post by jonathan-kosgei » Thu, Jul 21, 2022, 11:15 AM UTC

I'm referring to the advice in this essay http://www.paulgraham.com/name.html.

Re: Ask HN: Has anyone followed Paul Graham's “Change your name” advice with success

#2

Post by groffee » Thu, Jul 21, 2022, 11:22 AM UTC

I'm not sure that advice is relevant now (if it ever was) no-one bothers with .com domains anymore.

Re: Ask HN: Has anyone followed Paul Graham's “Change your name” advice with success

#3

Post by jonathan-kosgei » Thu, Jul 21, 2022, 11:27 AM UTC

groffee wrote: post #2

I'm not sure that advice is relevant now (if it ever was) no-one bothers with .com domains anymore.

I've heard a few anecdotes of sites getting significantly better google rankings after switching to a .com.

Re: Ask HN: Has anyone followed Paul Graham's “Change your name” advice with success

#4

Post by Normille » Thu, Jul 21, 2022, 11:32 AM UTC

Article from 2015. Hardly relevant now, when one of the biggest companies in the world is happily using an `.xyz` domain.

Re: Ask HN: Has anyone followed Paul Graham's “Change your name” advice with success

#5

Post by liberia » Thu, Jul 21, 2022, 12:55 PM UTC

jonathan-kosgei wrote: post #3

groffee wrote: post #2

I'm not sure that advice is relevant now (if it ever was) no-one bothers with .com domains anymore.

I've heard a few anecdotes of sites getting significantly better google rankings after switching to a .com.

And you can register short (expired) .coms providing they’re not parked or up for auction.

Re: Ask HN: Has anyone followed Paul Graham's “Change your name” advice with success

#6

Post by muzani » Thu, Jul 21, 2022, 1:00 PM UTC

This is the era where people go to Facebook by searching Facebook on Bing or Google.

Re: Ask HN: Has anyone followed Paul Graham's “Change your name” advice with success

#7

Post by dyingkneepad » Thu, Jul 21, 2022, 4:49 PM UTC

Normille wrote: post #4

Article from 2015. Hardly relevant now, when one of the biggest companies in the world is happily using an `.xyz` domain.

Which one would that be??

Re: Ask HN: Has anyone followed Paul Graham's “Change your name” advice with success

#8

Post by go_to_moon » Thu, Jul 21, 2022, 8:52 PM UTC

dyingkneepad wrote: post #7

Normille wrote: post #4

Article from 2015. Hardly relevant now, when one of the biggest companies in the world is happily using an `.xyz` domain.

Which one would that be??

https://abc.xyz/

Re: Ask HN: Has anyone followed Paul Graham's “Change your name” advice with success

#9

Post by muzani » Fri, Jul 22, 2022, 3:41 AM UTC

go_to_moon wrote: post #8

dyingkneepad wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which one would that be??

https://abc.xyz/

In a sense, they literally changed the company name to make this domain name work.

Re: Ask HN: Has anyone followed Paul Graham's “Change your name” advice with success

#10

Post by muzani » Fri, Jul 22, 2022, 3:46 AM UTC

This is probably a story to that point though: http://www.mycreative.com.my/news_events/malaysian-startup-f...

"First, whenever there were writeups about them, their linkback would wrongly be published as FashionValet.com instead of .net, leading to some confusion. After this happened too many times, and the team got tired of explaining the reasoning behind choice, they decided to acquire the .com address."

It was also around the time PG wrote that article, so maybe it was just a thing of the era.