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Often times during seminars, I’m asked what to do if a particular domain that an attendee wants is taken.  While bidding on the domain is sometimes an option, I usually white-board out with them strong alternatives.  These are usually variations on the brand, or common keyphrases that reinforce the product or service. At the end of the day the domain is important, but a site with a clear and intuitive call-to-action or service complimented with a committed marketing plan, you have more freedom of choice than you would think.

Then I reference del.icio.us.

Joshua Schachter, creator of del.icio.us, addressed a problem he had maintaining a list of sites he frequently cited on a previous project he co-created named Memepool.  He created a website to store, share and ultimately discover bookmarked URLs. The service was addressed prior to the name.

When the the domain registry opened the .us extension, he jumped on the name due to the variations that ‘icio.us’ offered.  I don’t know that Schachter wanted to purchase delicious.com at the time, but it is a perfect example of creatively addressing the lack of single domain names within the .com extension without devolving to misspellings.

“I’d registered the domain when .us opened the registry, and a quick test showed me the six letter suffixes that let me generate the most words.”

From a 2004 interview titled “A Del.icio.us Interview” on Rands in Repose

Though it wasn’t the first, it has quickly become the most well known and frequented “domain hack” with 5 million users and 100 million bookmarked URLs.  This creative thinking is exactly what I suggest to clients and attendees. Although unlikely to capture lightning in a bottle with this particular hack, businesses need to operate outside of the conventional thinking while starting their online initiative.

Schachter’s was an online Cinderella story.  Created in 2003, purchased (for an undisclosed sum some speculate as high as $30 million) by Yahoo!, del.icio.us has survived to become one of the most popular social bookmarking services.  And although they did it with a creative domain name, the more important lesson is that it was the product that provided a great yet simple service.

“del.icio.us is most powerful because the content that is being tagged and stored is stuff that individuals have chosen and flagged. A real human being.”

From Mitch Joel’s post “You say del.icio.us - Now say delicious.com“

Its now at the end of but one of del.icio.us’ chapters that they evolve to delicious.com.  The domain in this case follows the product.  But this isn’t the end of the book.  With the adoption of the new domain name, the developer also rolled out a new design, speed and functionality.  Their Yahoo! sister company MyBlogLog recently went through a redesign and failed to address the latter two.

Domain names and design are important, but del.icio.us by any other name functions just as sweet.

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This entry was posted on Monday, August 4th, 2008 at 9:46 am and is filed under Marketing, Search, Social Networking, Web / Tech. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.