Reid Hoffman had a great line at the last Startup School to the effect of "Most mainstream web users can remember 7 +-2 web services. If this is true (and I believe it is) $500K on domain names is not a bad investment for a few reasons:
1. Easy to say/spell. I work for a startup where I have to spell the name of the company every time I talk to someone. We are a medical company so its not a big marketing issue, but having to explain your site is Colr.com or TheColorApp.com instead of just "Color" will impede consumers.
2. It makes you seem like a real company with the resource to own a short, properly spelled name rather than yet another creatively spelled SocNet. Talk to some non-early adopters and you'll see how important this can be.
My take is that most people are mocking the amount of money being spent on what is initially seen as a photo sharing service rather than a platform that will allow people to quickly assemble social networks of real life friends. in different contexts.
Only true if they planned to exit on the app alone. Maybe the plan is ambitious enough to warrant the expense.
In unrelated news: a friend of mine casually referred to her boss as a 'green' on Saturday... apparently it is the result of popular personality test that everyone in the company has to take. The result (one or more 'colors') is part of their email signature for internal correspondence.
Totally Agree. I think photo sharing is a classic "Thin Wedge" that Dixon and Wilson have written about before. Think about how powerful Color could be:
Business Networking - Go to a conference and create an ad hoc social network. You are basically automating what Fridge and Lanyrd are doing now.
Neighborhood Social Networking - Need to organize a carpool or soccer practice schedule? Moms can set up a network with their phones while sitting in the stands watching their kids play.
Same for schooling, retailing, and dozens of other opportunities where you might want to let people communicate then sell them stuff. If nothing else it might be so it is easier for advertisers to remember and more easily access the self serve ad mechanisms the founders described.
I could see all of those eventually having a traditional "Web" page though it might be assembled and interacted with very differently than a traditional soc net.
The neighborhood social networking example is not as straight forward as it sounds. The barrier to use isn't just the user experience, but the metaphor behind the application. Most regular people have a hard time learning new metaphors to interact with technology.
Do you really think that an entire group of middle-aged moms would all download an app on their smartphones to co-ordinate carpools? No! They don't want to deal with technology. Most likely they will just talk person to person (what a novel idea) or use their existing email list from the team.
Don't mean to get too personal, but this kind of thinking is one of the disadvantages from living in Silicon Valley. You become disconnected from how the majority of people live and interact with technology
Exactly. Normal people won't use technology unless it does something they can't, but need to do, or makes something significantly easier. They don't just use tech for its own sake like I do.
I can remember a couple of nights in my youth when I might have enjoyed putting together a location-specific ad hoc social network... right around closing time.
>Most mainstream web users can remember 7 +-2 web services
I seriously doubt this. AFAIK most people have 7+-2 "registers" of short term memory, which has strong implications for stuff like the maximal # of digits in a phone number - but it doesn't affect the number of phone numbers you can remember, or names of people, or ball players etc.
As for "real company name": Google, Yahoo, eBay, Skype, Paypal, Wikipedia, MySpace, Hotmail, Amazon, Apple, Dell, Starbucks... Company names can become meaningful without starting this way.
I actually had a hard time trying to find the app in the Android Market, because there's only one search term and it's really generic. Colr would probably have been easier.
Similar problem (tons of "color" apps), but Apple managed to rank them highly in results when I looked.
I assume they key off of selection criteria from the users (ie. most users installed X after searching for Y, so rank X higher for Y), but it could also be that their company name and app name are both "Color".
> 1. Easy to say/spell....having to explain your site is Colr.com or TheColorApp.com instead of just "Color" will impede consumers.
> 2. It makes you seem like a real company with the resource to own a short, properly spelled name...
This is not a very hard problem to solve.
kragen@inexorable:~/devel$ cat shortnames.py
#!/usr/bin/python
# Pick unused domain names. Kragen Javier Sitaker, 2011.
import socket, random, itertools
def lookup(domain):
try:
return socket.getaddrinfo('www.'+domain, 80)
except socket.gaierror:
return None
# We try an unlikely-to-exist domain in case our ISP engages in a
# man-in-the-middle attack on DNS traffic.
failing_dns_response = lookup('jaoiwgjaioawjio'+'aioj.org')
words = [line.strip() for line in file('/usr/share/dict/words')]
short_words = [word for word in words if 0 < len(word) <= 6]
print "Considering %d short words." % len(short_words)
for ii in range(20):
while True:
sld = random.choice(short_words) + random.choice(short_words)
if len(sld) <= 2:
continue
domain = sld + '.' + random.choice(['com', 'org', 'net'])
if lookup(domain) != failing_dns_response:
continue
print domain
break
kragen@inexorable:~/devel$ time ./shortnames.py
Considering 22221 short words.
LippiSeurat.org
crownseagle.net
JoleneMable.org
anorakbarf.org
baitdepend.org
opticbib.org
elopevictim.org
maniacAbner.org
glandhanker.org
nthprissy.com
dumpsSandra.org
measlyhafts.com
cassiaLaud.net
avowstarots.com
Elvianoun.org
duchyfeisty.net
dualgales.net
hikingpinup.com
dirgesBarnes.net
tillchars.net
real 0m15.749s
user 0m0.140s
sys 0m0.028s
How about dualgales.net, opticbib.org, napstiff.org, ticketgorge.org, damnharem.net, bargehutch.org, ravagepunk.net, jigglemutant.net, EliRx.org, jobunsafe.org, vendspanda.com, lathedkid.com, poppedcopula.net, triadsvia.com, civicsdiary.com, greyvalet.com, queenfigs.org, pagansultan.net, tacofoci.com, odderzoos.net, fleatablet.org, and so on? The whole blob of them all together looks like spam, because spammers register domains using a very similar approach, but any one of them is a perfectly respectable, easy-to-say and easy-to-spell, relatively short domain. This program can generate about 1.5 billion different domain names, modulo possible weaknesses in random.choice.
1. Easy to say/spell. I work for a startup where I have to spell the name of the company every time I talk to someone. We are a medical company so its not a big marketing issue, but having to explain your site is Colr.com or TheColorApp.com instead of just "Color" will impede consumers.
2. It makes you seem like a real company with the resource to own a short, properly spelled name rather than yet another creatively spelled SocNet. Talk to some non-early adopters and you'll see how important this can be.
My take is that most people are mocking the amount of money being spent on what is initially seen as a photo sharing service rather than a platform that will allow people to quickly assemble social networks of real life friends. in different contexts.