

Mutable Suggestions For Naming A Startup - jasonlbaptiste
http://onstartups.com/tabid/3339/bid/17702/17-Mutable-Suggestions-For-Naming-A-Startup.aspx

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il
Do you think a .com domain is absolutely necessary? I spent hours yesterday
trying every possible combination of words to find an available .com with no
luck.

Finally I said screw it and registered a one word .io domain that describes my
product perfectly, as well as the [word]io.com domain. I hate to be too
trendy, do you think users could learn to use a .io domain?

~~~
staunch
The general (US) population does not understand anything other than .com.

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il
I feel that unless you snag a .com that's your exact name, you're screwed
either way.

I ended up with [word].io, but I was deciding between that and [word][obscure
animal].com . I think I made the right choice.

Fortunately, most of the traffic to my site will be from links and not casual
mentions/word of mouth, so the tld shouldn't be a big problem.

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dabent
Good ideas! I just grabbed the Twitter account and Facebook page for my latest
project. I hadn't thought of those.

Finding a domain that's available at any price seems harder to do these days.
Squatters are just sitting now, waiting it out or waiting for a crazy offer
they can't refuse.

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joystickers
Pretty awesome tips. I don't necessarily agree with the uppercase suggestion,
though. If you strip the color from Google's logo the font isn't as
identifiable as Twitter or Facebook (both of which are lowercase) so the
combination of colors and capitalization of the first letter makes it stand
out. Amazon's logo is all lowercase so I don't know if his example is 100%
accurate.

The logo I made for Joystickers is all in lowercase precisely because it
stands out. Had I used a capital J, it would have looked pretty plain. The
lowercase j along with some GIMP magic make it a little more interesting.

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dshah
I was actually not thinking about capitalization in the logo (which I'm fine
with either way), but about the actual name as it's used in written form.

Amazon, Google and Facebook all use an upper-case letter to start their
"official" name (if you see it in text anywhere).

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joystickers
Ahh, I see - good point. I misunderstood.

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ryanwaggoner
These are mostly good suggestions, but 8-10 seem a little trendy, especially
the reasoning behind #10. I really doubt people will even be using Twitter in
ten years; picking a shorter name for your company because it'll be easier for
people to RT your links just smacks of social media bubble.

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dshah
That's a fair point.

But, there are reasons other than twitter for shorter being better.

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makemealive_dk
Great tips! I definitely agree that domain registration is a flawed system and
cyber squatting is annoying.

I believe that a name is very important. It is how people identify with your
business. If it is difficult to remember your business will have a hard time
capturing that very valuable "word of mouth".

I would always suggest putting the money into trademarking your name because
then you have a leg to stand on if you want to go after someone sitting on
your useful domain.

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acangiano
These are good common sense tips. I think that my project Any New Books?
(<http://anynewbooks.com>) scores pretty well on most of these points. What do
you guys think? The question mark pisses me off at times, for example when it
comes to using the site name in possessive form (e.g., Any New Books?' Blog),
but overall I think its inclusion adds something to the name of the site.

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staunch
I like ANB :)

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devmonk
'Also, stay away from clever domain names like del.icio.us.'

But, as the author states, the Libyan domain names are in vogue now: bit.ly,
letter.ly, etc.

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gxti
Forget the clever domain tricks, even just naming your company "craply" in the
first place makes me get a little stabby. -ly, -ify, and any other clever
lingual arrangements are going to be out of fashion in short order and you'll
be the oh-so-trendy company with the lame name. My only consolation is that
these companies will burn out as quickly as they arrive.

OK, that was quite bitter. For some reason I have a perhaps unusual emotional
response to certain patterns of syllables, like a useless sort of synesthesia.

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dshah
Absolute.ly :)

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TheSOB88
There are actually 18.... I'm sorry, that was uncalled for.

