When you are naming your new startup, do you usually count on someone calling you up and saying "Hey, I've got this seven letter domain name that matches the name of your business. You can have it… for free!". I bet you don't. Neither did we, nor did it happen to us, but something even better did happen!
I probably won't be the first one to say this, but I think that in the age of social web, twitter handles are as important as domain names. Actually - more important, way more important! It used to be crucial to have a domain name that matches your business name, or makes some sense, or at least is short and easy to remember. Then we ran out of domain names, and now you can pay north of $10,000 for a six-letter .com name. But you shouldn't. Domain names do not matter as much anymore. A short and unambiguous twitter handle is what matters the most!
If you don't agree with me, look at these three trends. First, Google is teaching us to use search words instead of website addresses. That's what they are doing by merging the address bar and the search bar in Chrome. You just type in what you want, and Google will figure out what the correct URL is. Next, everywhere on the web URLs appear shortened using services like bit.ly. And thus, many of your website visitors may not even know what your domain name is. And lastly, micro blogging/update streams such as Twitter and Facebook are becoming the main gateway to the content (that's why Google is so keen on having their own social network). These days, almost all blog posts that I read come from my twitter stream. Keep in mind that there are only 140 characters in a twitter message, so the shorter your handle, more content can accompany your handle in a single message.
So forget the domain names, and look for a short and memorable twitter handle when naming your business!
When we were naming CityBot though, twitter handles were not on our list of priorities. We were looking for available domains and ended up paying $700 for citybot.com. After buying the domain, I registered @citybotapp and was scratching my head thinking, how lame it was not to consider the twitter handle before buying the domain. Soon after, we sat down with our advisor @silverton to discuss our twitter strategy. We agreed it was a shame that @citybot was already taken, we did some research and figured that if we got lucky, whoever owned @citybot would be kind enough to give (or sell) it to us. We didn’t have high hopes - it was a long shot, but it was worth a try. We agreed that @silverton would facilitate this conversation.
And then the miracle happened! When @silverton reached out to @citybot, he realized that the owner, @anselm was connected to him via social graph. It turned out that @citybot was one of @anselm's numerous ideas that he had worked on recently. Several DMs later, @anselm sent us the password and wished us the best of luck.
This was a key social capital investment in our team. @anselm was willing to just give us the Twitter handle, based upon social capital exchanged previously with @silverton and others in their shared social graph. Could @citybot have been purchased for any amount, from completely unknown private parties? Maybe, we don't know. What we do know is how much the motivation and encouragement, attributed to a key early social capital investment of goodwill and faith in our team, has propelled us forward. So thank you @anselm! And thank you @silverton! We are making good use of @citybot with over 1000 followers already and adding more every day.
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