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Since the dot-com boom days of 1998-2000 and continuing today,
Master-McNeil has often been engaged to create names for new companies,
often venture-funded, whose business propositions were Internet-centric.
In both business-to-business (B2B) and retail/business-to-consumer
(B2C), our Naming.comTM practice
has established a strong track record for creating appealing, memorable
company and product names for these ventures, names which are available
both as trademarks, and as dot-coms.
Some noteworthy dot-com names created by our Naming.comTM
practice include ariba.com, netopia.com, gmbuypower.com,
vividence.com, digiplex.com, and petrocosm.com,
among many others.
Unlike many other firms, all but two of our Internet company clients
have survived; many have thrived and gone on to become leaders in
their fields. Whether this is because the smarter, better companies
(who are going to do well anyway) choose Master-McNeil, or because
our names contribute greatly to company success, who can say! When
creating names for the Internet, we are guided by several principles:
- We will not employ tricky spellings to achieve domain name availability.
In fact, we greatly prefer to secure not only the name we want,
but any potential misspellings as well, when creating a name for
a new dot-com company.
- We will not sacrifice name meaning or relevance to domain name
length. In our view, a slightly longer domain name is preferable
to a marginally shorter, but less meaningful and relevant, name.
- If the exact dot-com is not available for an excellent new
name we have created, we will recommend combining our new name
with a second relevant word or word-part (tech, co, etc.) to achieve
dot-com availability. This is preferable to choosing a less attractive
new name, just to get the dot-com domain name.
- We strongly advise against the adoption of generics or near-generics
as company and domain names. We far prefer the ownable, brandable
virtualvineyard.com to wine.com, for example.
While the bloom may be off the dot-com rose, we believe that the
Internet as a business medium is here to stay. The ability of names
to function online, whether as dot-coms, or as one of the new top-level
domains, will continue to be a focus of our Naming.comTM
practice.
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