When I first learned about Meta’s plan to launch a product called Threads to compete with Twitter, I was curious to know what domain name would be used. The most obvious domain name – Threads.com – is being used by a company billed as “a Slack replacement designed for makers.” The startup was launched in 2019 and is backed by Sequoia Capital with more than $10 million in funding.
This morning, Meta Founder Mark Zuckerberg posted the first Thread, and it revealed the domain name that was chosen: Threads.net.
Post by @zuckView on Threads
According to the DomainTools Whois History tool, it appears that Threads.net was acquired earlier this year – perhaps as recently as April. Threads.net was registered to NameFind, the domain name portfolio business owned by GoDaddy. Prior to that, the domain name had been owned by Frank Schilling’s Name Administration.
I did a bit of research, but I could not find the asking price for Threads.net. GoDaddy’s appraisal tool values it at less than $10k, but it does list a prior sale of Threads.net at $1,300. This may have been Frank Schilling’s original acquisition cost.
I don’t recall seeing a major brand launch on a .net domain name in a very long time. With Meta’s aim for this service to compete with Twitter, I would imagine it would love to upgrade to Threads.com at some point.
Zuckerberg (Bill Gates 2.0) will go after Threads.com eventually, if he hasn’t already.
Threads App will kill Twitter eventually IMO.
Huge missed opportunity
FB already has massive branding clout with WhatsApp.
WhatSay.com was perfect name for socialmedia site/app and would gain immediate audience recognition due to the WhatsApp brand
I went on a maniacal domain search and purchase frenzy in the past 48 hours; threads.com and .net being the suffix of many compound names. I need help.
I don’t really understand why you would do that.
.net looks out-of-fashion today; I would choose .io or .app because they are more contemporary. That’s just my own opinions, though.
.com would’ve been the primary choice. .io is mainly associated with tech and data companies. .app would’ve been fine for use on a phone but odd when using in browser (whenever Zuck & co enable the browser version). .net means “network” and is still the first choice for a hefty percentage of pure networking sites.
With enough money to promote it on “billboards” or whereever, You can put quotes around anything like “Threads.net” and no one cares. DOT COMs are for smaller and startup business because they do no have the money to put quotes around a NON DOT COM. It that simple.
That said Threads.com AND their business model likely will be bought out by Meta and my guess is they will all be happy. In the mean time I have to think the Thread.com traffic and business model awareness has exploded by 100x ?
Bri
They should have went with threads.app domain since they advertise themselves as “an Instagram app”