The Internet is the easiest thing to get into. To be an Internet retailer, you just get that URL.
When I was starting out, I thought about how the Internet is global and that we should have a global name, a name that's interesting. At that time, the best name was Yahoo! Suddenly I thought, 'Alibaba is a good name.'
I ended up buying business.com for $150,000 because I wanted to make it a magazine. It would have been a 'Time'-type magazine: how to do business on the Internet. And I was offered a lot of money for that domain. I played two buyers against each other.
Most people are fascinated to see someone play an instrument in an inspired way. We are moved by witnessing musical brilliance, and it was this notion that led me to purchase the GuitarTV domain 10 years ago.
The Web is a huge world.
Parents will purchase the dot-com name for their baby. We have been aware of some instances where somebody didn't name their child a particular name because the dot-com wasn't available.
Company naming is a key part of the branding process, but it's subject to contrasting tastes and an illiquid domain name market that results in startups wasting their time during the branding process.
I was really just a hard-core geek, if you will, in 1996, and was building websites as a hobby. I started doing a lot of web design and development and built my first website on the now-defunct GeoCities platform.
I want to start a blog.
A domain name is your address, your address on the Internet. We all have a physical address; we're all going to need an address in cyberspace. They're becoming increasingly important. I believe we'll get to the point where when you're born, you'll be issued a domain name.
In direct navigation, users type exactly what they are looking for in the browser's web address field. This could be the exact domain name or web address. Millions of people do this, emphasizing the need for on- and off-line marketing and branding.
No one wants a domain with their name on it owned by somebody else.
I can put up a blog in 10 seconds.
It's too easy to do your own site to not have one these days. I guess everyone has one.
The Internet was supposed to allow anyone to set up a web page and share their knowledge with the world. But in practice, it's too difficult and takes too long, and almost no one does it.
Thanks to our friends at the dot-ME Registry, WordPress is able to offer one of the shortest and most effective URLs available today.
Imgur has always been profitable right from the very beginning, and the only time I ever had to spend money on it was for the initial domain name because as soon as I released it, people liked it so much that they were donating, and so Imgur survived for the first six months just purely on donations.
For Web-based services, owning the .com is very important when considering search and discovery. But consider your channel. For companies playing in the mobile app space, the dot com may be less important - it's about status and searchability in the app store.
