Rafael Sosa’s Weblog

Response to Peter’s post on Social.com’s sale.

I believe Social.com has enormous value in it. We can speak of new Web 2.0 companies, but there are two flaws in analyzing successful Web 2.0 companies with strange names as an argument to justify the value of domains.

1. Not enough time has gone by to demonstrate a clear benefit from these names against more common names. A person in the middle of the first Internet Bubble might have argued for a general name, such as Pets.com with the same enthusiasm that we defend a Flickr now. And yes, we know Pets.com’s destiny.

Now we are in the middle of Web 2.0 and all its heat, and we might just all sound like Socrates’ blind men in a cave. The future is still uncertain for the Web 2.0 and its funny name companies.

For a more concrete analysis of brands and names, perhaps it’s safer to go for solid brands – IBM, Microsoft, Coca-Cola, whom have proven their prevalence throughout the decades. I can see Coca-Cola being somewhat generic and descriptive. Pepsi on the other hand, is perhaps more “Flickrish”. Who’s more successful and can that be attributes to its choice of brand? IBM is International Business Machines. That’s descriptive, but who cares? They always only use IBM.

Social.com has a value that no new Flickr domain can have – instant recognition and type-in value. When everyone talks about “social” ever wonder how many people type in social.com to see what’s happening there?

It’s unquestionable that social.com will save money in branding efforts. I spend most of my work time online, and I can hardly keep up and much less remember all these weird sounding companies. But I can guarantee not a single reader of this blog will forget Social.com, Business.com, Money.com, Sex.com. These names are solid and that’s something that will prevail through all our fads. Flickr is “in” right now, but those funny looking names might just be passé in a few years.

2. The second flaw is simply that many of these names aren’t getting a unique brand anymore and could be as descriptive as a generic name, but with the confusion that they aren’t- they are misspelled! What I mean by this is, we all know what Flickr is, because of their mainstream recognition. When you have one thousand new names being registered with an “er” sound, you are no longer unique, rather you are a descriptive brand of your generation, in this case the Web 2.0 generation.

(Disclaimer: I have no affiliation with Social.com)