I read this headline a couple of times before starting to read the article, and all I saw was “Social.com”. Only after reading I realized it was Social.FM, I would say at least 1-2 minutes after landing on the site.
This little experience has opened my eyes to the value of the .com branding power in the user’s mind. It is no secret that with domains, people see or hear one thing but then remember a different domain or extension. But seeing one thing and instantaneously perceiving it differently? That is real brand power.
Over the years I came by a number of similar experiences where the methodology was so predictive that my brain was thinking one thing even though my eyes saw another. A good example of this is how we read. For example, if I write a sentence where the length of the keywords is the same and only the first and last letters are correct, your brain will most likely be able to read what I mean, even though it isn’t what your eyes see.
“Ckn y8u rqsd tljs?”
Of course you can. You can because you are used to a certain pattern, in this case the pattern to read words in other sentences, making up what they mean just by glancing at them. It is the same with domains and it is partially responsible for traffic leakage. We may visually see a .FM domain, or a .Org, or a .TV, but what our brain reads, because of our extensive usage over the years of the .com extension, is a .com domain.
Hello Sahar
Yep! I didn’t notice the .fm at all until I read your post. I saw the headline and thought “social.com, nice domain name”!
By the way, I’ve been lurking as a feed subscriber of yours for many months now and enjoy reading your posts.
Kind regards
John
In fact the branding of the .com has been so strong that it is synonymous to the generic “website” or the internet itself. It is in itself regarded as a generic!
Just think of how many people who goes around and says stuffs like ” I own a dotcom” when they actually meant “I own a website”. How about the term “dotcom millionaire”, “dotcom bubble” or “dotcom business”.
I have never heard of a “dotnet entrepreneur” or “dotinfo company”
It is like…”please Xerox this document” or “can you give me a kleenex”? A really strong generic brand, stubbornly engrained in consumer’s minds!
Al.
mmm. I kind of understand what you mean. On a couple of occassions I have looked at my domain inventory and for a fleeting millisecond have dreamt I own Mobile.com and Video.com as opposed to the reality of Mobile.IM and Video.IM
I do think though that your dot com bias has conveniently overlooked the fact that this company has chosen to rebrand AWAY from dot com and TO another extension! Dot TV is shaking things up in this area too.
Come to think of it, maybe if I ran a start up mobile or video instant messaging company I would be be more than happy to be branded Mobile.IM or Video.IM!
This post reminded me of other posts you and some of the other blogging domainers have made regarding the power of the .com “brand” and the gazillions of advertising that has gone into branding “dotcom”.
I was thinking of this branding effort when, in the last week, I noticed the same full page ad in two major print magazines (The Atlantic and Scientific America I believe). Essentially, it was an expensive campaign on behalf of the .ORG brand. The copy reads like this:
– quote —
POWER OF .org
We are TIAA-CREFF. We are a dot-org. Not a dot-com. .
As a dot-org we answer to our participants first — those who serve the greater good: .
O-R-G, three of the most trusted letters found after a dot on the whole World Wide Web. And the place you will find them, when it comes to financial services, is after our admittedly very dot-org name.
TIAA-CREF, of course.
– end quote –
I thought it was a fascinating example of big marketing dollars being spent to promote a domain extension, and doubly fascinating because the extension was NOT dot-com and was NOT being promoted by some monopoly designer extension franchise.
I did a test on a group of people at a call center one time to see if other extensions were popular. Heres the test: I would go to each person and say just the ‘DOMAIN’ word but no extension. I’d say “go to my site ‘DOMAIN’ “, but never mentioned .com. Every single person added .com automatically to the end of ‘DOMAIN’ with the exception of one who said “.com right?”
—-ANSWER—-
What’s wrong with that last one? Geez!
That was an interesting post about people confusing Social.FM with my own web site at Social.com. Perhaps I should give them a call
Seriously though, I’m trying to figure out the best way to continue development of Social.com beyond the directory that I have setup. I have started to contact some parties (Web development firms, etc) that might wish to help. There is a “Contact Us” form at the site for your readers that might wish to share feedback with me.
My biggest challenge at the moment is just trying to get into Google’s index - sigh …