Comment by selmnoo | Hacker News Reader

Comment by selmnoo | Hacker News Reader

Parent Full thread

Concerning .org tld, here's a relevant wiki paste: "It was one of the original domains established in 1985 and operated by the Public Interest Registry since 1988. The domain extension was originally created for non-profits, but this designation no longer exists and today it is commonly used by schools, open-source projects, and communities as well as by for-profit entities, some of which may use the suffix in an attempt to misleadingly suggest their non-profit status"

I bring this up because indeed .org tld is used generally for non-profits, or the non-profit/philanthropic arms of for-profit companies (google.org, etc.), so branding .org tld for your little startup would seem like a misguided decision, and may possibly impair the professional look one is going for. I know you've just said that this is an attractive option where brandability isn't important, but I'm hoping you can discuss this just a little bit more. Is using .org for one's startup a total no-no or is there some conceivable scenario in which it would actually work out?

If wiki articles start purchasing SaaS I will begin to care what they say, but office managers purchase SaaS quite routinely, and empirically they don't care. If you doubt this, you're welcome to chat up the office manager at e.g. your dentist. Ask them to a) name a TLD, b) name three common TLDs, and c) explain the difference between those TLDs.

But your first point stands: you can only use the .org because you willingly forego brand building. If you want to build your brand, you need the .com, because branding must agree with consensus, which is that powerful brands own the .com. I argue this is common fact.

So if you are not buying the .com, you are choosing not to build the AppointmentReminder brand. Why? Surely, more markets exist for you to sell to. The recognizability of a brand bridges market segments. Since every market segment communicates in its own language (because of varying contexts), they need standard identifiers of solutions to problems, which a brand provides. With a solid brand, you control a channel of communication between markets. Thus, you naturally expose the company to new markets.

There is nothing stopping you from growing AppointmentReminder 10x, at least. The markets exist for you to capture. So why don't you try to do capture them? The first step is paying $30k for the .com (maybe make the marketing materials first).

Did you actually try his experiment? You should. Find someone who might actually buy an appointment reminder service --- the person who manages the calendar for a professional services company --- and ask them the difference between .COM and .ORG.

Your "common fact" is "common" on message boards. You have message board blindness, and it's begging you in this instance to spend $30,000 on something that would potentially not improve sales at all. That's a disastrous decision for an early stage startup.

> The first step is paying $30k for the .com (maybe make the marketing materials first).

Isn't paying 30k for a "brand" piece the last step? You know, after making 30k with the business (or multiples of that?)

It seems really bad business strategy to vomit 30k on a domain name before you even get started in a business (and I love branding).

AppointmentReminder isn't a brand. For the reason that Snapchat is a brand while DisappearingPics is not (and probably wouldn't ever be) a brand.

My guess is that patio went for SEO boost over brandability when picking the name.

Apologies for the self-admitted low quality of this response, but this is a fantastic response.

Perhaps you should read a bit farther down that Wikipedia page:

Anyone can register an org second-level domain. Although org was recommended for non-commercial entities, there are no restrictions to registration. There are some instances of org being used by commercial sites such as craigslist.org.

Refer all complaints to Craig Newmark.

It's been decades since anyone cared what those suffixes used to mean. Just look at all the .co domains. And how many of those .cc domains are really in the Cocos Islands?

Depends on your audience. There are people who type "facebook.com" into the google search bar. Do you think those people know what a .org is?

"...but this designation no longer exists..."

Is this just the fine print? Or does it just not matter anymore.

You could of said a tl;dr version that .org is for organization and .com is for commercial.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com