LocateTV Blog

How do you measure the cachet of a dot com?

When we first started development, we intended to have our primary site URL as ‘Locate.tv’, but after discussion with friends and family we had to acknowledge that many people are still not aware that ‘.tv’ is a valid web domain. This is even with the regular press given to the financial benefits that ‘.tv’ has bestowed upon the fortunate Pacific Islanders who live in Tuvalu.

It really made us think. Forget the About page or the tagline - our URL is the first contact people will have with who we are, the proverbial cover by which we will be judged; so what message would we be sending out by using ‘tv’ or ‘com’? Our initial instincts to use ‘.tv’ told us that it was more original and therefore, hopefully, memorable. It seemed especially appropriate for a site that we hope will become the very default page for ‘tv’, something helping people navigate and cherry-pick the content they want from the big bewildering world of ‘.com’.

However, you just cannot avoid the supremacy, the iconic cultural status of the dot com. Many non-commercial organisations insist on a dot com where an org, info or net may in fact be more accurate. And sites seem eager to use a second-level domain registration (www.filmnews.com) where a sub-domain would in some ways be more logical (www.worldnews.film.com).

The interest value of suffixes as .travel, .aero and .museum (not to mention the hotly debated proposed .xxx) does not make them any more likely to be used in an online world where simplicity and familiarity always make the utmost commercial sense.

Thus we decided to curb our geek enthusiasm and bow to the purity of ‘LocateTV.com’. A lot of thought over a little thing, but a very important little thing indeed.

James