What’s in a (domain) name?
By Ed | November 24th, 2007 | Category: Biz Planning, Domain Registration, New Technologies, Sales & Mktg | 1 Comment »A comment I read somewhere prompted me to think about domain names for websites ….
Our own domain name buildaskill.com might seem obvious enough, especially when we Capitalise within the name string – BuildaSkill.com – but there are people out there who like to play with words, and why not? It is after all an ancient form of humour.
BuildaSkill.com could be punned as BuildAskIll.com (I’m sure eBay think so from some of our blog and forum posts and comments). But it gets funnier, or more insulting, or dangerous, for some other domains.
Consider those famous Microsoft support professionals ExpertsExchange.com (providers of deep-core support for individuals and corporates running Microsoft Exchange Server and associated server suites) – how about someone calling them ExpertSexChange.com ?
Then there’s the leisure complex company, Pen Island Resorts, who aught to shoot their webmaster for opening them up to jokes about PenisLand.com – or they could change their marketing strategy to attract bored housewives and Club 18-30 female members?
As much as there is an aversion to using hyphens and underscores in domain names (a sort of stigma that doing so means you’re a Johnny-come-lately to the web world), there are clear cases for when it’s advisable.
As the online retailer Perfume Bay found out – online auction mega-site eBay took exception to their domain name taking them all the way through the US court system because of name-copyright infringement – www.perfumEBAY.com (All credit to TamEbay 
for discovering the story).
Sometimes it pays to find your office joker and run a proposed domain name past them first
[...] For now, while you’re starting to think about what your domain name might be, take a look at this earlier post in the [...]