

Ask HN: your thoughts - .net domains o.k. or unprofessional? - christofd

I don't see too many YC companies with a .net domain. Although when asked, most say that it doesn't matter. Is a .net domain a 2nd rate mark?
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clemesha
Recently I overheard some "non-techie" people discussing a university website,
I looked over one of their shoulders, and they had written down ".edu.com".
Point is, people are very familiar with the .com tld.

That said, it probably depends on your audience - if you have a great site or
cater to a more tech-minded audience, it'll probably make less of a
difference.

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mikeryan
Its not second class but it's likely bad from a marketing perspective.

When you tell someone the name of your company they're going to go to .com
first - and if you don't own that its going to look strange.

The real exception are sites which make creative use of country code domains
like bit.ly or del.icio.us

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Soupy
I agree, I would personally try to go with a .com simply because it is the
first thing people are going to try. It's simply habit. I've been following
the recent trend of country code domain usage and I believe that these are an
exception to the rule IF the country code is somehow used in conjunction with
the site name. People seem to remember this distinctly and disconnect it from
the .com altogether solving the issue.

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movix
Personally I rate domain hacks, especially perfect ones like last.fm. I think
think the dominance of the .com should be challenged, partly because how many
.coms are genuine businesses, i.e. do they make any cash, or do they just lose
it hand over fist - shouldn't there be a .fail TLD ?

I know there's lot's of issues with hacks like this, but still think they're
worth exploring and are a neat way of bypassing the speculative purchasing of
.com names.

Try www.domaintyper.com for some neat domain name choices.

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redorb
.net is 2nd rate unless you are a 'network' or ISP .. other than that - go for
a .com

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satyajit
When you have .net, you need to market your site with .net on it, else all the
traffic meant for you is going to go to .com. Perfect example is Box.net -
they have made .net as part of the branding.

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andhapp
I would personally not buy .net for the reasons mentioned in this thread
already. Similarly, I would not have hyphens or any funny spellings in the
address either. Just keep it simple, if your company is called Yahoo then
yahoo.com should be where people can find about you.

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christofd
Yahoo! was initially a funny spelling before people got used to it. Same with
the word Google (before 1999 I would have not known how to spell that).

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bgnm2000
in my opinion yes - solely for the fact that people will almost always try
.com first.

however, devver.net (from the techstars incubator) has a .net, so thats not to
say it isnt done.

