Matthew Mullenweg is a genius. Want to know why? Because his web site is http://ma.tt. Yes, it’s that short and actually spells out his first name. His reasoning for going with the ma.tt domain actually makes complete sense.
If, for example, he wanted matt.com, there’s no chance he could get that domain for anywhere under $10,000 minimum. Furthermore the Matt that owns that domain would be very unlikely to sell it. And bear in mind that’s a domain with four alpha characters in it.
Ma.tt cost Mullenweg $500 per year for a 2-year registration. Does that sound a bit high-priced? Not really when you consider how short and memorable the domain name is. If you wanted any dot-com that was only two alpha characters before the .com it would cost some serious cash. When you think of it that way, $500 a year is actually a really good deal.
Another domain that has a non-dot-com name is blogging.la. It makes complete sense because it’s about metro Los Angeles California stuff, so the dot-la TLD (top level domain) really works in that application.
Yet another is del.icio.us. This one actually spells out a true English word.
Typically you’ll spend anywhere from $35 to $500 (or more) per year for country-specific TLDs. You can check out all the ones that exist here. Many can be used to spell out English words or names.
If you were looking for that perfect name for your web site, give the country-specific TLDs a shot; you might get lucky!
Downside to names such as del.icio.us is that users have to remember where to put the frakking dots. Del.icio.us is, thankfully, well-known enough that people remember. But imagine a billboard advertising, say, “spa.cio.us” (let’s say for an apartment complex). When you got home, you’d have to remember whether it was “sp.acio.us,” or “spa.cio.us,” or something else.
There’s also the issue of non-dot-com names. Matt works well because it’s only four letters. With a longer name, though, people would have to think too much. You’ve got to be careful when leaving the dot-com world, and figure that a good number of people will go to “matt.com” first.
Me, I grabbed my last name early on so I could be firstname@lastname.com.