

Domain Names - JasonPunyon
http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/07/domain-names/

======
jazzychad
Funny, I would have picked the "Baking for Dummies" book. Perhaps it's because
I am a novice at cooking and don't necessarily want the _best_ book on baking
at the moment, just an introductory one; and I can be pretty sure the Dummies
book will be decent since it is part of a well-known series.

Likewise with these StackExchange sites; some of them I had no idea they were
stackexchange sites until I actually visited them. It took quite a while to
click on their links after seeing them around the net in some cases. Had it
been superuser.stackexchange.com I would have immediately known it would
probably be a high-caliber Q&A site.

I guess I'm an outlier on both points?

~~~
JadeNB
I think the general premise that ‘series are bad’ is flawed. When I am looking
for programming books, I look for O'Reilly (maybe that doesn't count as a
series, in the sense that one can refer to “O'Reilly volume 47” or whatever,
but neither can one do that with a “for Dummies” book); when I am looking for
math books, I look for Springer Lecture Notes, London Math Notes, or any of a
number of other series. (In fact, I was just marvelling the other day at the
universality of the Springer brand—even in domains about which I don't know
anything, when I see that logo, I immediately think that I'm seeing a book
that's worth reading.)

~~~
hartror
Brands are aimed at demographics, which is why Unilever has the Dove brand and
the Lynx brand for basically the same product for example. People identify
with a brand, have a perception and make purchasing decisions based on it.

What Joel's point is, I believe, is that generic umbrella series/brands are
bad for user/customer perception (such as his "For Dummies" example). And as
the entire Stack Exchange ecosystem is going to cover a massive range of
topics it makes more sense to separate them as the good perception of a Stack
Exchange cooking site isn't going to help the perception of a Stack Exchange
mechanics site.

~~~
fragmede
I can kinda see Joel's point, but it runs counter to the whole notion of
branding. Cooking may seem to have little to do with mechanics, but a QA
website about cooking vs. a QA website about mechanics has, well, the QA
website part in common.

That's not to say I'd put up with crap on a mechanic's QA site even if the
cooking QA site was good, but previous experience with Google search
absolutely helped sell the Gmail switch.

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tptacek
This title is editorializing a little bit: it refers to a throwaway comment in
a longer, more interesting article.

~~~
thenbrent
It is editorialized, but I would not have followed a link titled "Domain
Names" as it does not convey the quality of the article.

I think it's reasonable to use one of the more interesting points of the
article when the original title is so vague.

~~~
ars
So basically linkbait works, and it's just lucky that this time it pointed to
something worthwhile?

~~~
thenbrent
I was trying to support reasonable use of editorial. I was not supporting
"linkbait" editorial. There is a big difference.

The poster referenced a piece of the article. He/she did no use gratuitous
link bait like "* * * TOP 5 DOMAIN CHOOSING TIPS [vid] * * * ". It's unfair to
treat them like they did just because they changed the title.

------
JacobAldridge
If you're wondering about the reference to being "Influenced by Ries and
Trout", it's a reference to the book _Positioning: The Battle for your Mind_ ,
which I've recommended on HN before and will continue to do so -
[http://www.amazon.com/Positioning-Battle-Your-Al-
Ries/dp/007...](http://www.amazon.com/Positioning-Battle-Your-Al-
Ries/dp/0071373586)

It talks about the importance of standing out in your marketplace, because
consumers want simple purchasing decisions so will only, at best, compare the
top few.

------
kes
I wonder how this relates to Reddit. Both sites (SO and Reddit) have unique,
community driven and created sections.

Would a site like Reddit benefit from turning some of these sections into top-
level domains? I know that they are having financial issues right now, and
could this be a possible step to move away from their problems into something
that would be profitable?

~~~
metellus
I think the communities are fundamentally different. On Reddit, you think of
yourself as a Redditor. You may only go to certain subreddits, but it's all
supposed to be a part of something large. For SO, one of the main points was
to give quality search engine results. You search for some problem you have
and SO shows up instead of experts-exchange! ServerFault and other spinoffs
are supposed to stand on their own in a way that I think Reddits are not.

------
jsharpe
I wonder if he's referring to experts-exchange with that dashes comment?

~~~
frisco
Experts Exchange's dash is important because it disambiguates a potentially
(comically) mis-read URL: Experts Exchange vs Expert Sex Change

------
ErrantX
I think Joel misses the point about brands; whilst still getting the decision
right :)

Stack Overflow _is_ a brand - in it's visuals and how it works.

The name is where it gets interesting; because often products are "branded"
using their name - but not always. And this is one case where there is
absolutely no need to brand the sites using the Stack Overflow name - doing so
would be like branding it the same way as the supermarket own brand of a top
class store. i.e. the store is quality, the goods are quality, but the brand
name makes it look cheap :)

------
Encosia
Seems like that's simultaneously missing an opportunity to capitalize on their
brand _and_ missing an opportunity to strengthen their brand.

------
callmeed
_"we decided that individually-branded sites felt more authentic and
trustworthy."_

Doesn't Craigslist fly in the face of this theory?

------
qjz
The most important and valuable aspect of a top level domain is that it can be
treated as an individual asset if there is an opportunity to sell it (or if it
needs to be split away from the parent organization for some other reason).

To support this, it's ideal if all of its resources (images, stylesheets,
scripts, etc.) are also served from within the domain, without being dependent
on other domains owned by the parent organization (code can still be shared by
using symlinks or multiple virtual hosts pointing to the same resources). This
should help simplify any transfer.

------
netcan
Exchange sites _are_ part of a series.

The real question is not about some abstract branding truth: people
trust/don't trust series.

They should be asking whether they want to accentuate or deaccentuate the
grouping. Do they want good brand equity to flow between them. Do they want to
avoid bad brand equity (brand liability?) to flowing? Do they want the sites
to feel more independent?

Relying on 'series are bad' as justification is like when clients tell me that
blue makes their clients feel like buying.

~~~
dirtyaura
But StackExchange sites will work only if they inspire a community of domain
experts around each site. And the whole Stack Exchange idea is about separate
communities, not about community around Stack Exchange brand.

I bet that garden aficionados around the world would enjoy more to be part of
the LiliesAndRoses.com community than StackExchange.com/Flowers community.

~~~
netcan
One the other hand, they are looking for members of one community to seed the
next. They are looking for people to understand some of the concepts by
recognising it as an exchange site. They are looking for communities to learn
from eachother.

I'm not saying it's the wrong choice. I don't know much about it.

Just saying that as an argument 'Americans don't trust series,' doesn't cut
it. I also think it isn't true. I absolutely do pic 'Lonely Planet.'

------
eel
I'm leery of nearly any domain with hyphens in it, as it almost always feels
like an Adsense site with either low quality or scraped content.

To me, dashes reek of desperate SEO.

~~~
patio11
_dashes reek of desperate SEO_

Dashed domains are to SEO as bogosort is to scalability.

------
mkramlich
I think their argument about series domains vs standalone names is actually
backward. If people like the StackOverflow format you want to easily attract
those people to the other sites that use the same engine. You want cross-
polination of visitors, and you probably want to get some PageRank momentum of
the established base domain name.

------
sjm
If the quality is excellent and the name isn't tacky (e.g. for Dummes), then I
think a series is much more beneficial. There's no way I'd compare '..for
Dummies!' books and StackExchange on anywhere near equal footing.

------
spooneybarger
Can someone explain the dashes reek of desperation bit?

~~~
JacobAldridge
If you have to use dashes in your URL, then you must be desperate for that
name. A business would only register shirlaws-coaching.com if
shirlawscoaching.com were already taken, and the business was desperate for
those words.

The OP's opinion seems to be 'if you need dashes to make it work, it ain't
gonna work, move on'.

~~~
prawn
It's also a dig at Experts Exchange (the Q&A site that Stack Overflow started
partly to combat) who have a domain with a dash.

~~~
rimantas
afaik, they had expertsexchange.com, but were not happy with option to ready
it as "expert sex change"

------
mkramlich
domains with dashes tend to be easier to read, imo

~~~
jasonrr
Maybe easier to read on screen, but not easier to type or say to someone else.
There was a previous comment about reading punctuation over the phone, which
I've found true. In addition, there are lots of folks who are generally
confused by which punctuation mark is which. My wife recently had a 5 minute
conversation with someone who simply didn't know what a dash was (it's in her
company's domain). As the SO brand spreads beyond the hacker community
memorable word-based URLS without punctuation will be even more important.

My biggest problem with the series vs. individual sites thing is that I
already have to remember so many URLs and information about my identity on
each site. Where do I log in to see all of my notifications from the various
sites? How do I find my friends when I move from one site to another? How do I
see that a bunch of my friends are now answering questions on a cool topic on
a totally new SE site? A series approach would have provided a much more
straight forward approach to answering these questions. I think the unique
sites make leveraging the asset of users who participate in many communities
harder.

