Domain Pigeon adds 20K+ available Twitter names--more on the way | Hacker News Reader

Domain Pigeon adds 20K+ available Twitter names--more on the way

domainpigeon.com

14 pointsmatt115 comments

A great example of a startup iterating quickly and moving into relevant spaces. I imagine the cost to analyze available twitter names was minimal, and will provide considerable value to the "twitter brand" types.

Overall brilliant feature. Just wish they were a bit more active in responding.

Thanks, I'm glad you like it! Checking Twitter name availability was relatively easy compared to redoing a large chunk of the site to accomodate more than just domain names.

What do you mean by "Just wish they were a bit more active in responding?"

I think you made a mistake here. Twitter names are not the same as domain names because the amount of info they contain will always be limited by design. But you've elevated them into the main namespace and diluted your core offering, in a manner that is unclear to new users.

It's a good idea to have twitter names, I just think that the position on the page of the names is bad - they should have been on a different page. I also think you should have gone with long domains also like I suggested last time.

Given Twitter's popularity and current growth rate, I think it'd be a mistake NOT to elevate it the front page.

And anyway, visitors can always filter by domain names only or Twitter names only, allowing them to explore only what they're interested in.

I'm still considering the long names. One thing at a time :)

When I scan the headlines on HN, I usually pay little attention to the links I've already clicked on. I'm sure many others do the same. Guess that's a good lesson: create a blog post or a separate page, e.g. www.domainpigeon.com/twitter, when announcing a new feature.

Just a little thing: if I click on a twitter name, it takes me to a page which says "this domain is still available".

Also, I agree with the idea of splitting up the domain and twitter names - it was far from obvious to me at first look to see which was which. Either that or move the legend to above/below the filters as it appears off the bottom of the page at the moment.

Any chance you have JavaScript disabled?

Its entirely possible that it's something to do with my browser - I was looking at it from work where we have to use ie6 :(

i don't use twitter, despite the multiple invitations from friends...at least not yet

nonetheless, as soon as i saw this, i knew i had to register my startup's name on twitter. thanks so much

Thanks. You'd be amazed at how quickly the names are going. When I went back right before this launch, I checked a few of the names to see if they were still available and was blown away by how many were registered in such a short period of time. If you're thinking about registering a name on Twitter, you'd be wise not to procrastinate :)

probably a good lesson - basically where-ever possible - register the .com, probably the .net, the twitter,gmail,hotmail,yahoo,wordpress,blogspot names as well.

Who's gonna be the first to create a tool that does that all for you? :)

There was a rate my startup type post a few months back of a site that checked the availability of user names on all those sites with a single click. If you can find it, it's probably as close as you're going to get (since it'd be very hard with all the CAPTCHAs to automate the name registration). Mechanical Turk, anyone?

http://news.cnet.com/8301-17939_109-10223183-2.html

that looks like the startup you're talking about

Well I guess you could automate everything except the captchas. Just ask the user for a name. After that check availability on serviceX, display captcha, repeat.

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