The breakup of a natural-language word into a domain name, or part of a domain name like our own, does create friction; I’d never argue that it doesn’t. At the same time, given that both delicious and Ma.gnolia have new people finding the services every day, it stands that most people are finding those sites by their linkage from elsewhere, like search results, a blog, stuff like that. I think it’s a nice to improve, but in a time when url bars remember every visited url, re-finding is easier that just recall from the wet-ware

Well, it still costs money to secure domains and I don’t think magnolia.com would come cheap. When we launched, and in our first year, we did, and that’s what makes me say we’d do it differently if we could do it over. We haven’t heard much if anything about changing the url for over a year, so I wonder about the imperative. Harmful? Yes. Deadly? Maybe. As far as Magmarks, it’s clearly a bargain but just doesn’t ring quite right. And that’s often what it’s about - does it feel right.

I do think you’re very right, that the dots are little more than friction for most people. For us it was a way to get the brand we wanted and experience has informed us on that decision. I agree with your conclusion, just not that it’s trivial to change.

If my memory serves me, Joshua Schachter got the delicious.com domain pre-Yahoo, but post VC It’s a little beside the point.

Although, I enjoy the play, there are enough people that are new overwhelmed by computers and the internet, and having sat down with a lot of people one sore spot is getting to their favorite sites. Many people rely heavily on their bookmarks — thank goodness for your service (which I prefer) — and until it’s in their bookmarks a typo can mean they never get there. My conclusion is dots in domains are deadly

I bet there is a way to preserve your brand and to transition to a new domain without the cheak. go Google whacking again. magmarks.com is expiring and bidding is only at %59 dollars