Multex.com did it. So did MapQuest.com. Just a few months before
filing for an initial public offering, both firms changed their names,
adding what was then thought to be a necessary accouterment — the dot-com.
But now, in an environment in which dot-com is becoming synonymous with
flash-in-the-pan companies running sometimes-offensive television
advertising, Internet start-ups are beginning to reconsider whether
dropping the dot-com might help them distinguish themselves.
“When you hear all of these dot-com names on the radio, you come away
thinking ‘what was the company?'” says Bryan Thatcher, president and CEO of
Fusebox, an interactive agency that
recently changed its name from 12 Point Rule. “The dot-com becomes such a
punctuation, and much more powerful than what came before it.”
Another factor here is the widely-held idea that the best and most
memorable brand names are short — two to three syllables — and just
having the dot-com wastes valuable space in potential customers’ brains. It
weighs down the name, some think, making it more difficult to remember.
Dot-com fatigue is another reason cited for ditching the label.
“It was OK in the beginning, when the Web was brand new,” said Steve
Manning, managing director of naming consultancy A Hundred Monkeys, “but now
people are sick of hearing it.”
Of course, the dot-com moniker first came into vogue as a way of indicating
how people could find the company — online. But now that the general
population is more Web-savvy, that pointer may not be necessary.
“It’s as silly as if, when malls swept the country back in the seventies,
everyone had gone around adding “m” to their name,” says Manning. “It’s
just an address. There are other ways to convey where you are.”
Both Manning and Thatcher are advising clients to avoid the dot-com,
assuring them that there’s no compelling reason for having it. Some of the
most successful Internet-age brands, like America Online and Yahoo!, don’t have the dot-com, they point
out (although Yahoo! does have that trendy little exclamation point).
Those who eschew the dot-com believe it’s got a very dated feel to it, and
they predict it will soon seem old-fashioned. Now that businesses in nearly
every sector are migrating online, a name that distinguishes you as an
“online business” may seem unnecessary.
“It’s already starting to sound hackneyed,” says Athol Foden, director of
the naming division at NameTrade, a
part of Tollner Design Group. “If you say dot-com, you’ve clearly stamping
yourself as the nineties. Ten years from now, the Internet will be like the
fax. You either have it, or you’re out of business.”
The other issue that arises with taking a dot-com name is that it may place
limitations on what you can do. As more Internet companies venture into
offline businesses (witness AOL Time
Warner), a dot-com name may be seen as a limitation.
“You want a name that expresses what you do, but you don’t want it to be so
specific that it limits your business,” said Andrew Erlichson, co-founder
of Flashbase, a start-up that began
with database applications and recently expanded into doing online promotions.
There are those in the marketing business, though, that stand up for the
dot-com, saying it really does mean something, especially in an environment
that will soon become awash with dot-everything, as the Internet breaks
down international boundaries.
“Right now dot-com means a U.S. global player on a world stage,” said Drew
Neisser, presi
dent of Renegade
Marketing. “If they are a technology-driven company, I think there’s
still magic in the name.”
The “magic” that a lot of these companies are looking for, of course, is
financing — either from venture capitalists or from the public markets.
Although Fusebox, NameTrade, and A Hundred Monkeys advise their clients
against using dot-com at the end of their names, all say they’ve seen
resistance, mostly because there’s a feeling among entrepreneurs that
dot-com means more money — higher valuations.
It may be a false assumption, especially when you’re pitching at the more
sophisticated, levels of venture capital. But dot-com may help
time-crunched venture capitalists figure out where you belong more quickly.
“I think it helps in some cases in defining what the company does,” said
Tim Draper, founder and managing director of Draper Fisher Jurvetson. “In terms of valuing
a company, I think a dot-com avoids confusion within the financial
community, but makes no difference to a company’s valuation.”
In the public markets, too, dot-com once drove high stock prices, but now,
when investors have hundreds of Internet companies to choose from, dot-com
may no longer signify a sure-fire path to riches.
Still, the dot-com may still be useful, especially for consumer-oriented
companies or for those that need to distinguish their online divisions from
their bricks-and-mortar arms. But it appears that the advisors, at least,
are cautioning companies against adopting the “nineties” fashion of tacking
dot-com on their names.
In the end, though, it’s always up to the start-ups themselves. “We’re only
the advisors,” Foden said, “not the owners.”
