Let me get straight to the point: in my opinion, quite a few people will end up LOSING a lot of money due to the fact that their judgment has been clouded by social media hype. Here’s why:

Branding and a Domain’s Inherent Value Are Two DIFFERENT Things

Look: the domain name “digg.com” has nothing to do with digg’s success, just like the domain “ebay.com” has nothing to do with ebay’s success.  If Kevin Rose (digg’s founder) would have chosen pikk.com, hawgg.com or something else instead of “digg.com”, the site would have still been successful.

Waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay too many people are spending lots of money on crappy “web 2.0 domains”, something along the lines of “hey look, digg.com is a successful site: let’s spend all of our money on similar LLLL dot coms” . The same thing can be said about domains ending in “Space” (again, MySpace’s success  has nothing to do with the domain: it was a smashing hit thanks to its business model, period) and the list could go on and on.

Are Domains Important If You’re Chasing After Social Media Traffic?

Yep! Not as important as exact match domains are to people who want to chase after search engine traffic (for example ) but still, they’re important. People who use social media websites have an incredibly short attention span, so it’s obvious that having a memorable domain helps. After all, you want them to drop by again, right?

Let me make this perfectly clear: your domain needs to be memorable, not necessarily short. Most people make this confusion but guess what, not all short domains are memorable! In fact, most of the domains which are being bought by people who have been influenced by social media hype are anything but memorable.

Let’s play a game. Here are 5 LLLL dot coms which most people consider great or at least decent: Mupp.com, Zeeg.com, Mnop.com, Oolh.com and Ptoo.com. Alright, now grab a piece of paper and write down this question: “What were the 5 LLLL dot coms Andrei mentioned on his blog?”. Finally, put the piece of paper next to your bed and when you wake up, this question will be the first thing you’ll notice.

What do you think, will you be able to answer this question tomorrow? I don’t know about you but I’ll probably forget these domains within an hour or two and I’m the one who came up with the idea! Shouldn’t that tell you something? 🙂

The Conclusion?

As always, a memorable domain definitely helps but you need to understand that not all short domains are memorable. Seriously, do yourself a favor and remember this:

Memorable, not necessarily short: most short domains are NOT easy to remember!

Memorable, not necessarily short: most short domains are NOT easy to remember!

Memorable, not necessarily short: most short domains are NOT easy to remember!