Recently, I was in an entrepreneurial mood and went about buying two domains for ideas I’ve had for quite some time. It’s a good thing the .com’s were available because if they weren’t I probably would have scraped the projects. I then thought to myself, Why am I so stigmatized by non .com domains?
If I think about it there are quite a few successful blogs and sites which do not have the .com TLD but yet are wildly successful! Sites like BoingBoing.net, Progblogger.net, GetRichSlowly.org/blog, ZenHabits.net etc… are a few that immediately come to mind. So obviously to a lot of people not having a non .com domain means nothing.
It’s almost second nature to type in .com or hit Ctrl + Enter which could be the primary factor in deciding to go for that domain extension. Most people would not even bother paying attention if it’s a .net, .co.uk or any other type of domain extension. The single most factor, I think, attributed to this is that basically .com was one of the first extensions to be available.
I know a lot of people who would go ahead and buy the .net and .org just to protect their identity and to dissuade domain squatters from profiting on typos or even accidental visits to those domain names. Plus it’s also done in the interest of not losing visitors to those domains. I imagine for people from the UK it is second nature to type in .co.uk, probably the same could be said for people in Taiwan to type in .tw for websites - or maybe not?
I just know that I’m accustomed to .com’s and I think for one of my future venture I’m going to buy a .net just to see if I can un-stigmatize myself.
About the author
Hyder has been blogging for the past two years on this blog. He started Weborithm, his web company, in 2007 and along with designing blogs and websites also releases various web related products.
Zach on November 19th, 2007
1
Heh, I know what you mean. I have yet to use a non .com domain on any of my projects, though I nearly have buy the others. Now you’ve got me in the mood to use another extension, lol..
RickH on November 20th, 2007
2
When these extensions were dreamed up way back in the beginning, dot com was supposed to be for commercial sites, dot net for network services, dot org for organizations and non commercial outfits, etc. Have you been to craigslist.org or wordpress.org lately? The same goes for country-specific extensions. CBC.ca means something to Canadians that CBC.com would not. The same goes for BBC.co.uk
It is not just a question of getting used to these extensions. They have significance. That is why it would be a misuse of a dot net or dot org extension to use it to sell ipods or condoms - even though people are generally free to do so. It just tends to label them as being not real net-savvy.
Caribbean Web Development on November 20th, 2007
3
unfortunately I suffer from that stigma as well. Most times i’ll register all popular extentions of the domain but use only the .com
James Wilcox on November 20th, 2007
4
You are right about the .com stigma in the states. Most people assume sites are dot coms. Unfortunately .com isn’t always the best choice because it doesn’t always properly describe the business behind the .com. In that regard I’m glad there are other options available.
Jalaj on November 26th, 2007
5
When I tell some non-netizen my blog url (which is a .net) … they simply put www before it and a .com behind it… So many people still consider these two as essentials for a site name… and it’s for these people that .com still rules the net.
Btw I chose .net because .com was already registered