
Putting the Times’s First Email Address to Bed - ca98am79
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/20/insider/putting-the-timess-first-email-address-to-bed.html?_r=0
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comex
In the article's comments section, a notable comment from the Peter Lewis
mentioned in the article:

 _John, let the record show that The Times also initially turned down my free
offer of the nytimes.com domain, which I had registered. A couple of years
later they decided this internet thing was perhaps more than a fad, and
demanded that I transfer ownership, which I willingly did. They still haven 't
reimbursed me for the registration fee :-)_

~~~
elastic_church
shouldn't have transferred ownership. if they weren't treating the internet
seriously, then their trademark likely didn't include a provision for it
either

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walshemj
Quite sweet in way that in 94/95 the NYT had not a clue about mail when some
businesses had been running it for well over a decade by that point.

~~~
cm2187
Journalism is the art of explaining to others what you haven't really
understood yourself...

~~~
rhizome
Another way of saying that is that journalists are people who have questions.

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passivepinetree
I've always wondered why the Times' domain was nytimes.com rather than nyt.com
or newyorktimes.com. nytimes.com seems like an odd mix of initials and
spelling the words out.

This was a fascinating look into early internet history.

Also, it was pretty cool of Markoff to give the domain up in exchange for
keeping his old email address, rather than holding the paper hostage for a
bunch of money.

~~~
usaphp
nyt.com does not mean anything, newyorktimes.com too long, nytimes just
perfect, everybody knows what ny means.

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symlinkk
sure it does, it means the new york times. the wall street journal uses
wsj.com

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CPLX
In case you were wondering too, if you go to the browser bar and type in
nyt.com right now you are, in fact, redirected to the nytimes.com website. How
about that.

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hackuser
Why not switch to a .nyt TLD? Or .times?

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ceejayoz
Because it costs $185k, involves a bunch of work and infrastructure, and
wouldn't really benefit them?

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Preemo
This. Also, most people just plainly do not understand the new TLDs yet; and
sadly I don't think they will ever become mainstream anytime soon.

Deviate from .com .net .ca .org and most people become clueless. _Especially_
when users are sending an email, try explaining name@newyork.times is simply
the address when a user insists there's a typo and it's missing .com or
equivalent. Unfortunately adding a www. before, say on a business card, to
denote it's a web address is counter-intuitive in most cases as that just
lengthens the domain when typically the reason why one would get/migrate to a
new TLD is to shorten it/make it easy to remember.

~~~
JimmyAustin
My personal email is me at james aust.in, and its constantly a pain to read to
people, especially over the phone. I started saying it as me at "me at james
austin with a dot before the in", but eventually settled on "me at james aust
dot in". Only way to get it on the first try.

~~~
wyldfire
IMO the latter sounds clearer to me. I think I'm pretty savvy but if I
listened to the former on the phone I would have to take a second to parse it
and then I would read back something like the latter to you to confirm I got
it right.

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dlandis
Articles like this make me miss the old nyt. It was so comforting to have a
publication you could trust, a paper of record. Those days are long gone.
Nowadays, the constant, desperate obsession with controlling and manipulating
the narrative is just so icky.

