NameMedia launches NameFind.com to help businesses find a name

NameFind makes finding a company or product identity much easier.

NameMedia, the company behind Afternic and BuyDomains, today launched a new name finding service called NameFind.

There are a bunch of sites out there that help entrepreneurs find available domain names based on topics or keywords. NameFind goes several steps further and has a key component that makes if valuable to domain name investors.

In addition to finding unregistered and for sale domain names, the site pulls up matching social media handles from Facebook, Twitter, and over a dozen other social networks so you can quickly see if they are available. (Through a partnership with Knowem.com you can register all of them at once for a fee.) It also runs a check against the U.S. Trademark database to show you if there’s an exact match.

Users can narrow down their list of ideas and invite friends to vote on them. (This approach seems much smarter than some crowdsourcing services out there that let anyone see your idea.)

I’d argue all of this is pretty slick functionality, wrapped into a package that’s better than many competing services. It’s a great service for people going through a company or product naming process.

But that’s not what excites me the most. What excites me is that NameFind educates people that they can buy the ideal domain name, often times at a price that is well within budget. Too many people say “My ideal name is taken. I’ll look for another.” But that ideal domain name might be available for less than $2,000. If a domain name is listed on Afternic it will show up along with its price.