The popular press (do we still call it that?) often misfires when covering domain names. I’ve seen enough articles about the perils of “cybersquatters” and “domain hijackers” that I’ve become somewhat immune to the misrepresentations of our industry.

And yet, as I saw Farhad Manjoo’s article in Slate.com last week (www.thosenewdomainnames.areforsuckers) get traction – including the front page of Techmeme – I couldn’t resist the opportunity for some serious fisking.

Here’s goes…

“Now ICANN, the international body in charge of domain names, says it has a way to rid the Web of cybersquatting. Late last month, the group voted to create Web addresses that end in a much wider variety of letters than .com, .org, .net, and the dozens of country-specific suffixes that are currently available.”

Manjoo seems to be conflating two different issues. ICANN does indeed intend to introduce newTLDs but the goal is increasing diversity in the domain name space rather than eliminating cybersquatting. Some businesses objected, fearing that newTLDs would increase cybersquatting and essentially force trademark holders to preemptively buy all these newTLDs to protect themselves.  The response was the hotly debated IRT/URS process.

“When the proposal goes into effect later this year, businesses, municipalities, and other large organizations will be able to purchase domains of their own creation. The city of New York could buy its own suffix—to get to a city site, you’d type Police.nyc or Fire.nyc, and you’d e-mail Michael Bloomberg at Mayor@cityhall.nyc.”

Yes, it will be possible for companies to go to ICANN to get their own TLDs, but they’ll be owning the ENTIRE namespace for that TLD if they do that. Once they do own the TLD it is up to them to decide how domains within that TLD are apportioned.  Some TLDs will sell domains without restriction at prices similar to a regular domain today while others will set criteria for acceptance and still others will keep the TLD all to themselves.

So some people using new domains will pay a VERY large amount (for the entire TLD) while others will pay the going market rate.

“But ICANN’s plan comes about five years too late—cybersquatting isn’t a problem anymore.”

Not so. People still register domains that are precariously close to other popular sites or that incorporate trademarked terms in confusing ways. In fact the total number of UDRP filings increased last year (as did the number of registrations), so it’s hardly fair to say this isn’t a problem anymore.

“Indeed, ICANN’s plan to sell all these new top-level domains at very high prices—tens of thousands of dollars or more—seems like a scam, because domain names themselves just don’t matter that much nowadays.”

This is my real beef with the article.  Let’s look at the case he builds for this claim…

“Web browsers have gotten a lot smarter since the 1990s, and they’re now pretty good at determining what we want when we type in names that have many possible meanings. If you’re a fan of the Slate private-party venue in New York and visit its site often, you’ve just got to type S-L-A into your browser’s address bar and the site will pop up in a drop-down list. That Slate would be foolish to pay very much to buy Slate.party.”

Well, yes, auto-complete is a great boon to web users everywhere but that has nothing to do with domain names. It’s about getting them there in the first place so that auto-complete will complete to them.

Besides, on subsequent visits the domain STILL matters as the auto-complete is based on the domain anyway.  If “Slate” was at fdfsfsdfsdfsdfd.info then typing “S – L – …” isn’t going to help you.

“What’s more, lots of people now abandon the address bar entirely and rely, instead, on search engines to get around the Web. How do folks get to Match.com? According to Web traffic analysts, people type Match.com into Google and then click the top result. Are these people stupid? No, they’re smart: It takes a lot of work to remember every company’s exact domain name (is General Motors at GM.com or GeneralMotors.com or General-Motors.com?) and it’s much faster to let Google keep track. Chrome, Google’s Web browser, combines the address bar and search bar into a single field, which lets you use search terms as Web addresses. You don’t have to remember Josh Marshall’s long URL—Talkingpointsmemo.com—to get to his blog. Just type in josh marshall, and Chrome displays Google’s top results.”

Well, yes, search is becoming more effective all the time and the number one result in major search engines quite often does have the information we want.  But that’s not the point. People buy domains to be found when they are NOT the top search result. Imagine you’re some OTHER Josh Marshall.  How will people find you?  Being joshmarshall.me or theotherjoshmarshall.com might be the way to go.

And don’t forget that search engines have to figure out what to show as the top results and a relevant domain name matters.

Yes, SEO is important but so is a domain name. It’s not an ‘either or’ kind of thing.

“To be sure, cybersquatters are still plying their trade, and according to trademark experts commissioned by ICANN, domain-name disputes have lately been on the rise.”

Uh, then why did you say it wasn’t a problem anymore?

“At the same time, though, you see Web sites getting much more adventurous in the domain names they pick—look at the Lolcats site Icanhascheezburger.com or the social-bookmarking site Del.icio.us (which later changed its name to Delicious.com). These names suggest a nonchalance about URLs. It no longer matters whether a domain name is really long or has an unconventional spelling; people will be able to find it, anyway.”

Oh dear.

Funky Web 2.0 names have in no way helped these sites. Yes, a few have flourished in spite of their odd names but that doesn’t mean it’s a good idea to follow their lead.  This is a case of “survivorship bias” – thousands (maybe hundreds of thousands) of sites have been launched at sub-optimal domains that have hindered them considerably. The fact that a few made it to the big time is irrelevant.

Interestingly, Manjoo’s parenthetical note that del.icio.us changed it’s name to delicious.com just proves the point.

“And for cybersquatters, there are now other places to play. Social-networking sites are now the Web’s biggest properties, so getting your identity on Facebook or Twitter has become much more important than getting a good domain. Recently Facebook offered its users vanity URLs—e.g., www.facebook.com/farhad.manjoo—on a first-come, first-served basis; the addresses were snapped up at a rate of more than 500 per second.”

Do you want your domain name to market you or Facebook? What happens when you tire of Facebook (like we tired of MySpace, and Friendster, and GeoCities and AOL before that)?  Owning your domain name lets you point at all the interesting places you might be hanging out online.  Does anyone want to print business cards with facebook.com/mynickname on them when they could spend a few dollars and own a name they want forever?

“Twitter, meanwhile, has become a haven for imposters. The site has had to close down accounts impersonating Exxon Mobil, Kanye West, and my colleague Emily Bazelon, among many others. Twitter has vowed to become more vigilant in its fight against poseurs, and surely it will implement a plan to do so. Because Twitter has total control over its names, it can deal with squatters much more quickly than is possible on the domain-name system, which is administered by thousands of registrars across the world.”

But what recourse to you have when Twitter (or any site) arbitrarily shuts down your account and/or gives your name to someone else? None. This to me is the equivalent of saying “why bother with these complicated laws and lawyers, judges and juries, why not just let the King decide”.

But squatters wouldn’t get very far even if Twitter never got its act together. Last year, someone got on Twitter and began tweeting as Shaquille O’Neal. When the real Shaq got wind of the faker, he didn’t offer to pay for his identity; rather, he set up another name—The_Real_Shaq—and set the record straight. Now, it no longer matters that Shaq doesn’t own his Twitter name; when you Google Shaq Twitter, The_Real_Shaq comes up first (he’s got more than 1.5 million followers). We all should follow Shaq’s example—don’t ever pay for a screen name or a domain name again.

.basketball!