Dot-Com? Nobody Here by That Name
By Ed Boland Jr.
The New York Times

HE was once the belle of the ball, but now "dot com" is finding it increasingly difficult to land a suitor. Worse, she's even getting dumped, unthinkable a year ago.

E's, I's and dot-coms in a company name are no longer magnets for venture capital and positive buzz, so start-up companies are bypassing them while others are dropping them altogether, like so many unwanted pounds.

"Dot-coms were the craze in '96 when we started out," said Steven Hamberg, the chief executive of J2 Global Communications, which changed its name from Jfax.com in August. "There was clear market value. Now the assumption is that dot-coms are overvalued, and people are distancing themselves from these perceived values."

Companies like ClubTools, Lifeminders, Infospace and Preference Technologies have all dropped the dot-coms from their name. In hopes of getting people off the Internet and into their store, Limn furniture gallery has placed a billboard advertising their Web site outside of their San Francisco store with the www. and .com crossed out with large red x's, leaving only the company name to impress the passers-by. There are a number of reasons dot-com companies are changing their names: some want to express a clearer business purpose; some hope to avoid being pigeonholed on the Web, and others want to be taken more seriously by investors and the public.

"We used the dot-com because it was the norm of the day," said Paul Ognibene, chief executive and founder of ClubTools, formerly Clubtools.com, a company based in Boston that provides software and services to college and university organizations. "We found, though, that we really aren't a Web site, we are a service provider, that's what two-thirds of our business is."

With many Internet companies losing money, the image of the brash, young, start-up, like the irreverent teenage stock trader with a pink Mohawk, is being tempered by investors who are looking to see just what's in, and behind, a name.

"It's a sign of an early phase start-up making the transition to a more realistic, focused, goal-oriented young company," said Matt Yosca, an operations manager at ClubTools. Mr. Yosca, who said a majority of employees at ClubTools supported the decision, also found another benefit in the name change. "It removes the dot-com stigma. I would tell people where I worked, and once they heard dot-com they would roll their eyes as if to say 'how 1999.' Without the dot-com, they find my company more interesting."

According to Dan Saunders, senior associate at Kass Uehling, a name-consulting firm in Manhattan, the use of dot-com in a title is redundant. "We've reached the point where we have to assume that a company, group or organization has a Web site," he said. "It adds something to the name that is no longer necessary." Mr. Saunders said that the extra verbiage can also make a name choppy and hard to pronounce.

If another reason to avoid dot-com is needed, Elizabeth Goodgold can supply it. "If your business exists only as a dot-com, it's already generic," said Ms. Goodgold, the chief executive of the Nuancing Group, a brand consulting firm in San Diego. "In a country infatuated with brand names, a generic name is the kiss of death." Ms. Goodgold pointed out that there are already 1,600 dot-coms ending in "opia," 6,000 with the word "net" and 15,000 that use the word "planet."

"We don't recommend to any of our companies to use the dot-com," she said. "Secure the domain name, but it doesn't have to be your company name."

Internet companies are returning to the basic principles of effective business naming: make it memorable, identifiable, unique, pleasant sounding, easy to pronounce, and give some hint of what the business does. Otherwise, they could find themselves in the same position as ClubTools, when it simplified its name.

"We had to buy a lot of new stationery," Mr. Ognibene said.