The Curious Histories of Generic Domain Names

cheezitmike writes "ITworld.com uses the Wayback Machine to document the histories of five generic domain names: music.com, eat.com, car.com, meat.com, and milk.com. 'In this brave new Web 2.0 world, it's almost a badge of honor to have a Web site name that only hints at what the user will find there (see Flickr) or is so opaque as to offer no clue at all as to what the Web site is about (see del.icio.us). It's easy to forget the first Internet gold rush of the mid-to-late '90s, when dot-com domain names based on ordinary (and, investors hoped, marketable) nouns and verbs were snapped up by hopeful companies from the humble geeks who had purchased them (often ironically) in the early '90s.'"

Comments

The operative word is "almost"

[winkydink]

...it's almost a badge of honor to have a Web site name that only hints at what the user will find there...

The only reason companies resort to those names is because (a) all the good ones are taken and/or (b) there are potential trademark infringement issues with using more common sounding names.

Remember domain names BEFORE the web

[Anonymous Coward]

Remember that domain names pre-date the world wide web. Someone may have been using barf.com as a simple FTP site and never had a web page associated with it.

Re:Marketing Genius

[phoebusQ]

Before web searching was as effective as it is now (largely thanks to Google), it wasn't illogical to think that people might type generic domains to find what they are looking for, i.e. meat.com if they are looking to order meat, get info on meat, or what have you.

The idea that many marketers (and others) had is that not only would owning such domains get you more traffic, but it would also begin to associate the very idea of _noun_ on the web with your particular brand of _noun_.

A great name does not a great site make

[Nemilar]

The biggest advantage to a generic domain name is that you'll get lots of type-ins; for example, freemusic.com* I'm sure gets hundreds of hits a day, just from (unknowing) users typing it in, hoping for something good.

But in the new era, sites become popular because they are viral; flickr didn't become popular because of type-ins, it became popular because it offered a good service that people found useful, and it spread.

--A great name does not a great site make; but a great site can a great name make.-- Heck, just at Google! Verb, noun, and fun to say!

(*Disclaimer: I have no idea what's at freemusic.com, but I'm guessing it's parked by someone)

Re:Marketing Genius

[KillerCow]

I'm no marketing genius, but who the hell thought domain names like meat.com and milk.com were going to be goldmines?!?

Someone who thought that they could sell meat.com to:
The American Butchers' Association
The German Butchers' Association
Elite Butchers Association
The National Meat Packers Association
Alberta meat packers
Butcher Consultants Ltd
M&M Meat Shops
PETA
A Gay Porn Site

Someone who thought that they could sell milk.com to:
The USDA
Dairy Farmers of Ontario (owner of milk.org)
British Columbia Milk Marketing Board (milk-bc.com)
Any other milk marketing board (big, subsidized, cash-rich, protected business)
A Gay Porn Site

I'm no marketing genius either, but I think that it would be safe to think that those names would be worth at least $1000 to any of those organizations. Turning $10 into $1000 is a pretty good scam if you can do it a couple of times.

Re:Marketing Genius

[jawtheshark]

Ehm, you're confusing "slashdotters with experience" and "normal people". Normal people would most certainly write things like "dinner.com" or "restaurant.com", just to stay a bit more realist. The GP is right, Google changed the market. Domain names aren't as important as they used to be, search ranks are.