I have been working for some time on an internet startup/project and am currently considering how to brand our product. Because the product is largely web based, we need a catchy, relevant domain name. Ideally the product name and the domain name will be one and the same, or at least similar. As I am sure many of you have found, the ‘.com’ TLD is stripped pretty clean at this point. Sadly, most of these domains are held by speculators waiting for some Mega-corporation to come along with a truckload of $$ desperate to buy http://www.monkeyshirt.com/. So, we are finding our options somewhat limited. Either we go with something that is misspelled/abstract/verbose/nonsensical or we spend money we don’t have with a service like sedo. OR, we consider taking the road less traveled and dip into the domain netherworld of ccTLD’s (country code top-level domain) like .tv, .fm, .cd and others.

A few companies have had some success here – del.icio.us and last.fm come to mind – but I wonder if these aren’t the exceptions. Both are targeting younger, more technically savvy users who are less likely to be confused by these unusual extensions. Note: Both last.fm and del.icio.us own their .com counterparts, so they have their bases covered. Would YouTube have been as successful with a .tv extension? What if Flickr had gone the other way and paid $50K to use ‘flicker.com’ – would it have been as ‘fun’? Interestingly, ‘del.icio.us’ only works without the ‘www.’ prefix. I wonder how often people attempt to use ‘www’ and think the site is down or that they have the wrong address.

Either way, I don’t want to spend too much (more) time dwelling on the name (the product is ultimately more important). But, the branding is also critical and has some impact on the product design. I want to have that “eureka!” moment when the perfect name comes to me. Instead, I keep coming up with names like shothang.com. I may be hearing ’show thang’, but it reads like ’shot hang’.