This Band is Smarter Than Many Companies

Elliot Silver
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7

Domain names are an important part of a brand and its marketing. It should be easy for a consumer to find a business online, and the domain name is one of the key considerations a business must make. Despite this, it seems that many businesses make domain names a lower priority than they should.

I read an article about a band called Sultans of String, and they seem to understand the importance of a domain name more than many businesses. Here’s an excerpt from a Coastal Journal article which discussed how the name of the band was chosen:

“You know, it is so, so hard to pick a band name,” McKhool said. “We made a short list of the five or 10 names that we liked and asked a bunch of people that we knew, and that one kept coming up as being fun as well as evocative of the kind of music we were going to play.”

But most important of all? McKhool says, when he and Laliberte were brainstorming band names, “Sultans of String” was available for trademark.

“The domain name wasn’t taken yet, which is the most important thing in the world in today’s day and age!”

As you might expect, the band

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Air France Announces JOON Without Joon.com or Joon.fr (Updated)

Elliot Silver
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10

Earlier today, Air France-KLM announced the launch of a new airline called JOON. According to a  Bloomberg  article, JOON “will initially offer medium-haul services from the airline’s Paris-Charles de Gaulle airport base and begin long-haul routes in mid-2018.”

The airline does not appear to have acquired either the Joon.com domain name or the Joon.fr ccTLD domain name. The Joon.com domain name is owned by Canada-based Netincome Ventures, Inc. and Joon.fr is owned by a French event firm. Joon.com is currently monetized with advertising links, and the top of the landing page indicates that the domain name may be available for sale via the Uniregistry domain brokerage. Joon.fr is being used by the event firm.

According to the brand’s Facebook page, the company plans to use the FlyJoon.com domain name for its website. When I visited FlyJoon.com, I was forwarded to a page within Air France’s website. Here’s how Air France described the brand name on its website:

“Short, powerful and international, JOON’s name was conceived to speak to people all around the world.”

The brand name is interesting because of the pronunciation of the word. In the US (and possibly other English speaking countries), the word JOON sounds like the word June. In French, I believe the JOON sound would be spelled Juin

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Brand Names Are Important for Startups

Elliot Silver
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4

This may seem like it should be obvious to people who operate startup businesses, but brand names are important. This is especially true for startups that are seeking outside funding to grow their business. Not only does this seem intuitive, but there is a study that shows the importance of choosing a brand name.

Check out this tweet from Evergreen, a domain brokerage and consulting firm:

The tweet links to a Business Insider Australia article that cites an industry study with insight about how brand names can impact the funding a startup receives at different stages. From the Business Insider article:

“Names are are easily pronounced, such as Uber and Lyft, are preferred by both early and late stage investors. They tend to be offered more money, whether its through crowd funders, angel investors, VCs or IPO investors.

Uniqueness is also virtue, but only with early-stage investors. The study found that since very little is known about a company in the early stages, unique names give the impression there is something special about the company.”

Evergreen and others in the domain consulting space could probably share more insight than I can, but when it comes to naming, I believe

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Made In America: Smart Domain Strategy

Elliot Silver
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3

I noticed that people were mentioning this is “Made in America week” , as described by the President. When I saw this, I was curious about what I would find on the exact match MadeInAmerica.com domain name. I presumed it would be unrelated to the President’s initiatives, but I wanted to see what was there.

It looks like MadeInAmerica.com is currently in its beta phase and under development. According to the website, it has a pretty substantial mission:

“Our long term goal is to have a noticeable effect on U.S. GDP. This will be through partnering, promoting, and manufacturing highly innovative products Made in America.”

Aside from the cool looking logo, I was also impressed with the domain strategy that seems to have been employed. “Made in America” is a pretty common phrase, dating long before the current

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Despite All the Promotion, Amazon Doesn’t Own Prime.com

Elliot Silver
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9

Yesterday was dubbed “Prime Day” at Amazon. According to Amazon, “Prime Day is a one-day only global shopping event exclusively for Prime members.” There were a ton of news stories devoted to Amazon and its Prime Day deals all day. From my perspective, Amazon seems to be building a brand around its “Prime” membership. Of note, Amazon does not own the exact match Prime.com domain name.

If you visit Prime.com, you can see that it is a standard Uniregistry parked page with pay per click links. There is a message at the top of the page that says “This domain has recently been listed for sale Click here to inquire,” and clicking the link takes the visitor to a standard Uniregistry inquiry form. The domain name has been registered under private Whois for many years.

Prime.com has been up for sale before. In 2011, Prime.com was listed for sale in the Moniker / SnapNames year end auction. At that time, the domain name had a reserve price range of between $1 – $5 million. I searched through my email archive, and I see the domain name had been brokered in recent years. I looked at NameBio, and it does not look like the domain name sold during the Moniker auction, and I do not see any other public sale records.

My wife and I have a Prime membership. Generally when buying something on Amazon, I will tick off the “Prime” box on the search menu so that I only see items that are available for the free shipping. I think Prime is a great idea, and it definitely contributes to the regular Amazon shopping that my wife and I do.

It is somewhat surprising that

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Google Announces Dandelion, Which Uses Dandelion.CO

Elliot Silver
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5

Google’s parent company Alphabet runs a division called X. For X, the “mission is to invent and launch “moonshot” technologies that we hope could someday make the world a radically better place.”  In an announcement made on its X.company blog, the launch of Dandelion was announced. According to the blog post, “Dandelion will offer geothermal heating and cooling systems to homeowners, starting in the northeastern United States.”

From a domain name perspective, the announcement is interesting. Dandelion is using the Dandelion.CO domain name instead of a .com domain name. Dandelion.com is registered to someone in New York City, and it is unrelated to X’s Dandelion.

NameBio shows that Dandelion.CO last sold in 2013

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