Here are some notable domain names I saw around Seattle over the past month.
I spent the past month in Seattle on my annual “escape the Texas heat” vacation. And while people up here have complained about the 80+ degree days, it’s much nicer than what Austin is experiencing right now.
During my visit, I came across a handful of domain names that caught my attention. Here are some of them:
Southport.life
My understanding is that Renton has typically been the working class and manufacturing part of Seattle. Renton has become more attractive for living and office space as the rest of the city has become insanely expensive.
That seems to be part of the idea behind Southport, a big development on the southern edge of Lake Washington. I walked through the beautiful new Hyatt Regency and came across a sign promoting Southport:
Southport.com is owned by Digimedia. Southport is trying to pitch a lifestyle, so I understand why it went with Southport.life for its marketing.
RFI.com
While walking to lunch one day I spotted RFI.com on the side of a van. I always like seeing companies put three letter domains to use.
RFI Communications & Security Systems is a West Coast commercial security system design company.
HillTopper.bike
Biking is a popular way to get around in Seattle but the hills can be an impediment.
This poster caught my attention for its use of a .bike domain name to promote a kit that adds motorized power to your bicycle:
HillTopper.bike forwards to electric-bike-kit.com. I understand why they are promoting the .bike domain instead!
Jucy
I’ll finish with a perplexing non-domain. Take a look:
You see this type of promotion (to just Google the company name) a lot in Japan. But not in the States. It doesn’t make much sense to me why you’d send someone to Google rather than directly to your website.
Did you visit the Amazon Rainforest Spheres? and shake Jeff Bezos’s hands and explore Starbucks, Microsoft and smoke marijuana
Well, thanks a lot, neighbor for leaving me behind, in Hellsboro Tx. I meant Hillsboro
Like bad theater, bad domain names can often teach us more than good theater and good domain names can. Seattle boasts no shortage of either. Exhibit A: CentralCoop.coop
FWIW Mr. BullS, the Spheres are not accessible to the public. Inside, they’re not actually very big.
It’s ironic how we destroy nature and then spend lots of money creating tiny microcosms of it in places where it doesn’t belong.
This is good thing. Why?
Because while I like .com as much as anyone, it helps people become aware of the phenomenon and legitimacy of new TLDs. That in turn can help the new domains some of us think are good. For example, I only have a small number myself, but I really genuinely like them and believe they are really good. Do I say this as a “domainer”? I say this first and mainly as an end user. That’s what counts. I’m and end user first, investor and seller second. I’m the end user market for a domain name. Think about it. When I say a few are good, I mean it.
P.S. And to clarify, in most cases I only like specific whole domain names within a TLD, less so whole TLDs.
Accepting some as good is no threat to .com. It only enhances the value of .com imo. As some have acknowledged, for instance, there is no denying an example like Home.Loans is a great domain no matter how you slice it.
P.P.S. And to clarify further, make no mistake: about the vast overwhelming majority of the new I feel pretty much the same as Rick Schwartz, no question about it. I say that as primarily an end user too.
I think the Jucy thing (having googled it) is because their domains are jucyusa.com and jucy.co.nz , neither of which are terribly intuitive. Having someone google the keyword skips the customer going through “Choose your country,” as google will do that for you. (For the whopping number of NZ queries, but hey.) Going to jucy.com yields a parking page. I’m guessing Jucy just wants to punish whoever the squatter is, and “Google: Jucy” is at least as memorable as jucyusa.com is.
I missed jucyworld.com and jucysnooze.co.nz – but that supports my point. Let Google do the localization.
But why not just put JucyWorld.com on the side of vehicles that are in the US, and Jucy.co.nz on vehicles that are in New Zealand?