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We've developed
our rating criteria keeping the flip side of each category in mind, what
we term the name's 'Bite'. But bite certainty does not mean bad. We'd be
proud to sell 'junk.com' on behalf of its owner. Despite the negative connotations,
or perhaps because of them, this name is funky, spicy, tangy, cool, groovy
(whatever is your 'it rocks' word). Similarly, one of our favourite sites
on the web is fool.com. You don't forget this name do you! The site owners
spend a little time explaining why they are happy for themselves as amateur
investors to be labelled fools, and you go away remembering the URL. If
you remember, you can come back, and shush, don't tell anybody, the big
secret of domain names is that 'memorability' is all that ultimately counts.
The current domain market, however, is largely driven by a real estate valuation
model rather than a name's memorability (another future domain investment
pointer?) |
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Position is
Everything. This mantra of the real estate world holds as well for domain
names. The number one driver of domain values, as with property values,
is a 'prestige position'. That's why Dot Com dominates. Closely related
is a name's 'proximity position'. 'E' prefix is popular because early successful
sites such as eTrade and eToys made it a popular prefix. Many companies
would like to virtually reside close to these virtual addresses. Yet this
very popularity can be confusing; your brand may not stick out amidst the
forest of 'E's. The flip side of this commercial prestige, 'The Bite', is
that there is sometimes a counter reaction to Dot Com. This is something
we are seeing in the growing open source movement mostly residing at Dot
Org (slashdot.org) and in such sales as engineering.org (for approximately
US$200,000) to an engineering industry group. None of this indicates major
problems looming for Dot Com or the E prefix, but we alert you to them because
you should know that being part of a crowd has limitations. This is mainly
something to watch if your product or service is organisational, governmental
or not-for-profit. |
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Ok the name I'm evaluating passes all
these tests. That means its pretty hot property right? ----> |