By Soula Jones
2.15.2000
If Shakespeare were an Internet consultant, perhaps he’d pose this question: “Does rose.com capitalized smell as sweet?” And the answer would be: “Of course, you idiot!”
Yet our dotcom companies insist on toying with their names, causing us to waste great amounts of time. This, by the way, is just another feather in the cap of those who think the Internet has done absolutely nothing to increase our productivity. Not only do we have to get the spelling of dotcom names right, we have to figure out which letters are capitalized, whether to space between words , and if there’s a dotcom on the end. That’s four different variables!
The name game is interesting if only because it signals something. The industry heavyweights definitely like to capitalize. Take Amazon or RealNetworks and all the Microsoft Internet ventures, for instance. They’d never consider spelling their names with a small anything. Which leads us to wonder about companies that opt for the lower case, like drugstore.com and mylackey.com. Are they so cocky about their prospects that they think they don’t need to capitalize? And, more important, what will happen when the dotcom suffix falls off, like a discarded umbilical cord? Here’s a sample:
“In late-breaking news today, mylackey announced a major deal to deliver drugstore medications to the Artist Formerly Known as Prince.”
2.15.2000
If Shakespeare were an Internet consultant, perhaps he’d pose this question: “Does rose.com capitalized smell as sweet?” And the answer would be: “Of course, you idiot!”
Yet our dotcom companies insist on toying with their names, causing us to waste great amounts of time. This, by the way, is just another feather in the cap of those who think the Internet has done absolutely nothing to increase our productivity. Not only do we have to get the spelling of dotcom names right, we have to figure out which letters are capitalized, whether to space between words , and if there’s a dotcom on the end. That’s four different variables!
The name game is interesting if only because it signals something. The industry heavyweights definitely like to capitalize. Take Amazon or RealNetworks and all the Microsoft Internet ventures, for instance. They’d never consider spelling their names with a small anything. Which leads us to wonder about companies that opt for the lower case, like drugstore.com and mylackey.com. Are they so cocky about their prospects that they think they don’t need to capitalize? And, more important, what will happen when the dotcom suffix falls off, like a discarded umbilical cord? Here’s a sample:
“In late-breaking news today, mylackey announced a major deal to deliver drugstore medications to the Artist Formerly Known as Prince.”
Soula Jones is Content Chief at Seattle24x7.
