In case you missed it, the first NameSummit conference was held this week in New York City. Smack dab in the middle of Manhattan, actually, a few blocks from Central Park, Broadway, and across the street from the MOMA (Museum of Modern Art). All sorts of local NYC professionals dropped by. And more than a few domain industry regulars flew in, myself included.
Unlike a typical domain conference, NameSummit wasn’t all about domains. Instead marketers, entrepreneurs, agencies, developers, investors, domain companies, and domainers mingled to share ideas about branding and digital marketing. Some topics were decidedly different from what you might be used to. Here’s a quick summary.
Day 1
Brett Napoli described an ongoing “land grab for attention” like the land grab for domains. Every company, he emphasized, is a media company. “Document don’t create” is a mantra online publishers know by heart, and he recommends this approach because it’s faster and often more genuine.
“If someone enters your store and shouts ‘Camera’, what do they mean? Buy one? Sell one? Blend one?” That’s how Mike Grehan (of SEMPO and Acronym.com) introduced the topic of search intent. He described a change in user behavior. When we don’t find something right away, we’re most likely to enter a new search query. Hence (another mantra): “The best place to hide a dead body is on the 2nd page of Google.” Because machine learning can predict intent based on query chains of consecutive searches, not only has search become better; ranking factors have changed. Whereas in the past keywords and links were the most important criteria, now it’s user interaction.
Recently, the domain auction platform NameJet found itself 
