Probably nothing will happen. Nameservers for .ly are
dns.lttnet.NET, dns1.lttnet.NET, ns-ly.ripe.NET, auth02.ns.uu.NET, phloem.uoregon.edu. Of these only dns.lttnet.net and dns1.lttnet.net are hosted in Libya. If the dictator will have the local internet shutdown, he probably will not go to the lengths of also clearing all foreign DNS caches listed above.
Nonetheless I would be more careful in selecting a ccTLD to base my business on. Read, for example, about Gaddafi's dealings with Switzerland and you know which laws Libya follows at the moment.
As of right now, dns and dns1.lttnet.net (in-country) are unreachable, but the out-of-country nameservers are responding with what I presume was their last zone transfer. bit.ly still works, for example, but because of the outage, nic.ly is dead.
What do you suggest? Getting a .com domain? Have you tried to do that recently? All dictionary words and most two-word combinations are taken by squatters. I searched for a domain name for a new web app the other day and wanted a .com name, it was almost impossible to find anything. I spent two days searching until I found something.
.net and .org are better, but users always expect (and type in) .com.
It's not actually that bad. I recently wrote a script that sends me daily emails of all .com domains that are expiring that day, sorted by length, and by a measure of how "English-like" they are (just using a frequency table for pairs of letters). I was surprised by how much good stuff is available.
I didn't say ccTLDs were better than .com, but they're as good as .net/.org. If you're going to get a .net, you might as well get a .ly and make your service one memorable word.
I agree with the argument but am also beginning to be convinced by the opposing argument for many cases.. Consider 37signals' products, they don't have the product name in the verbatim .com form for any that I see - they've had to append words on the end. Apple doesn't own MacBook.com. Even companies who own their product names as domains (e.g. Fogbugz.com) aren't necessarily using them as a primary URL. It seems customers/users aren't /that/ fazed by it.
The fact that companies are doing it doesn't mean that customers aren't fazed by it. Sure, 37signals is doing well, but do you think the "hq" part of the basecamp domain helped? When 37signals weren't that well-known and wanted to market it, how many potential customers do you think they lost because people typed "basecamp.com", didn't go where they intended to and never visited again?
Customer retention is like trying to plug all the holes in a sieve, and a bad domain is one more hole. Personally, I'd gladly pay $50/yr for a domain if it meant that suddenly the squatters went out of business.
I can't find fault with your arguments because I'm sure they're true for many cases (and the 'plugging the holes' is entirely valid).
That said, my gut feeling is that at least a plurality of people are Googling terms like 'basecamp' rather than typing them in as URLs. And I doubt that those who do type in URLs are fickle enough to write off the task on one failure. Proving it either way would be laborious (but would make for interesting research).
I always try to subtly correct that, it irks me when misspelt :P I'm sure people will google for things (hell, I have the "I'm feeling lucky" shortcut bound to "l" on my browser so I do "l basecamp" and I'm there), but this only works if you're first on Google for your name, which isn't something many companies can boast, and certainly not when they're just starting out, which is the time you want new customers the most...
I can personally attest to becoming very confused by having the add "hq" to basecamp's address. It took me a very long while to get accustomed to that URL, having to repeatedly google basecamp to find it.
The fact that that tool even exists is an indication that I'm right. Sure, some combinations exist, but when "wallhat.com" is taken (by a squatter, it seems), I don't have much hope.
There's also the USA issue with .com. Sure, ICE seems to be targeting torrent domains for seizure for now but no one knows who they'll go after next or if your business will be collateral damage from some other seizure, with no due process or recourse.
Yep, that seems to be the best course of action. I'm bad at randomness, but I'm good at whipping up a simple markov-chain-based domain name generator in a few hours.
I'll train it on an English dictionary and they'll sound good as well!
Do you think there are a lot of bricks-and-mortar entrepreneurs who bitch endlessly about the lack of alternative planets on which to snap up cheap real estate or unique business name trademarks?
If the name you want is already owned, make contact and negotiate a price. You know, like everybody else in meatspace does with land, trademarks, etc.
Except that isn't always simple to do. When a domain name we wanted was taken by a squatter, we tried to get in contact with the owner, but never received any response.
You'd think that if squatters/scalpers were rational the market would be more efficient. The way things really work I think the domain name business is run by compulsive hoarders.
And part of the problem is that some people are "squatting" solely because others are truly squatting. Defensive domain squatting, you might call it.
I'm all for abolishing the TLD suffixes totally since (a) they're not used consistently anymore anyway, and (b) it reduces confusion between cases like foo.com and foo.org and foo.net, etc -- unsophisticated users (who are the majority) may assume some or all are the same service or purpose, but they are not. Yes, in a way, in acts to increase demand for a single namespace, but on the other hand, the same sorts of workarounds and naming hacks are still available (add extra words, suffixes, dashes, etc.).
I personally now like fun/weird non-sensical non-specific "made up" names because (a) they're more likely to not already be taken, and (b) they could be used for an almost infinite variety of purposes justifiably. For example: www.spooflurk.com could be for shoes, sex, politics, a CV, a company, a game, a band, whatever, whereas www.shoe-sales.com is rightly expected to be pretty much about selling shoes. Yes you'll get less "organic" traffic (and less accidental traffic, which may sometimes be the same thing) on the other hand I'm a firm believer that the most important thing is to provide something people want, and eventually the right number and mix of people will find out about it anyway, regardless of the name. The noise to signal ratio in the world is pretty bad so quality stands out and people talk.
Or at least please use TLDs that together with domain name actually try to resemble some English words, and are not just "take a noun, cut suffix, add .ly" mashups.
If there wasn't an artificially created shortage of TLDs, people probably wouldn't abuse country domains.
Besides, this game has started long time ago. It's not like .com, .net and .org bear any meaning either. Domains today are not really semantic. They might have been 15 years ago, but not now.
I apologize if I missed something, but I think it's shamefully insensitive of the editors of that site to not even acknowledge that this issue is proportionally irrelevant in light of the fact that peaceful protesters are getting shot to death TO-DAY in Libya.
Let's do a thought experiment for a moment and pretend there are some things more significant than web development and e-commerce, shall we?
yes I cross-posted.
EDIT: the author/editor there (Allen Stern) was gracious and considerate in his response to my complaint, and committed to trying to find a way to put the .ly domain issue in perspective in the article. Kudos centernetworks!
It's a domain fad that (as far as I can tell) started with Writely becoming popular five years ago. Here's a rundown of recent domain fads as I recall them:
2003: del.icio.us con.fuses.us
2004: 37signals helps create 43 Things and Jay-Z has "99 Problems" -- coincidence? I think not.
2005: Flickr makes a splash and gets acquired, penultimate vowels no longr requird
2006: Writely, the superbly adverbly named webapp, goes Googly
2007: Xobni presses rewind (okay, this one never took off)
2008: Adverbs come on stronger with .ly
2009: URL shorteners go.to 6 characters or less
I can't actually think of a domain name fad that hit last year. Any suggestions?
It's some dumb marketing gimmick. The idea basically seems to boil down to "only old foggies use the major gTLDs these days, lets be hip and make our company name an adjective that is also our URL".
It's more than a gimmick. A recognizable and memorable URL has proven to be extremely beneficial to new startups. Memorable .com addresses are becoming endangered, or very very expensive.
To this day I have to doublecheck myself on where the '.'s are places in "del.icio.us" (in fact, it abandoning this URL some time ago). Now, "amazon.com"? Absolutely no worries there.
Has anybody asked what happens to .com when the USA turns off their Internet? Having a .com address could be a huge risk to companies in other, more stable countries.
Nonetheless I would be more careful in selecting a ccTLD to base my business on. Read, for example, about Gaddafi's dealings with Switzerland and you know which laws Libya follows at the moment.