Comment by matthewphiong | Hacker News Reader

Comment by matthewphiong | Hacker News Reader

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A good, short, memorable domain definitely gives a startup a greater advantage in marketing & branding.

Kumo -> Bing, TheFacebook -> Facebook, GetDropbox -> Dropbox

I do agree that find a good domain name for a project/startup is hard especially you dont have lots of cash in hand (to acquire registered domains) but I don't agree with you that other shorter/sweeter/nicer domains didn't exist anymore in the wild. This might be true for 4-char, one syllable name but not all. I think it's fine if your domain is not directly related to the service/content of your project as long as it's reasonable/logical (e.g. if your project is about news don't use a domain like tropicaljuice.com)

You can always go for 5-7 chars, 2 syllables name. You can use tools like Dotomator or Domainr to find a good, fresh name for your project.

BTW, if you are willing to tell HN your "next big thing", we are more than happy to help you brainstorm a good name.

Good luck with the name!

Thanks Matthew,

my next big thing is..uhm.. basically a job listing site :)

I'm in the process of tidying up the environment, fixing obvious bugs and dressing up the site a little bit before going public. When done, will be back here requesting for critics :)

I believe that, as you've also mentioned, when product becomes well known, an upgrade to domain name will not be that problematic. what i fear is a way wrong name at the beginning might prevent it from gaining public liking.

I guess I'll stick to a simple general name, then will try to rename if it still bothers me.

Thanks

From an SEO standpoint changing your domain is always a headache. Even with tools from Google/Bing to facilitate the transfer your listings can go offline for a while before they re-index and hopefully pass your PageRank along.

If SEO is not a concern and you're strictly talking about your brand, I think you have more flexibility as many people will simply be unaware of your service until your achieve a certain level of visibility.

rentacoder has changed it's name to vworker, yet still keeping rentacoder name and domain and related links pointing to vworker. Of course i'll not be updating the name every two weeks, but may be in time it might be a necessity to rename the service.

Also i'm seeing this solution for "how to not postpone the project for not finding an awesomely awesome domain name" problem. So seo is not a main concern for now, before going public :)

thanks

A general name should be good for a new startup. Do make sure to check the name of your choosing properly to make sure it's totally 'free' from any trademark names.

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