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With
changes
in the way people use the Internet -
gravitating to social media sites,
accessing information through
apps, etc. - there have been a
lot of predictions in recent years
that domain names would
eventually lose their place as the
dominant way people navigate the
web. I never bought that and have
always felt that people and
businesses that rely, for example,
on a Facebook page
rather than their own domain name
for their sole web presence
were making a potentially fatal
mistake.
While
a fair number of businesses
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My
Name Is... image from Bigstock
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still
haven't yet figured out that they're
"turning over the keys to the
store" when they rely solely
on Facebook, an incredibly large
number of individual users
are showing more brand sense
than their commercial counterparts.
The world's biggest registrar, Go
Daddy, released a report
today noting that over the past 18
months the number of their customers
who are pointing their personal
domain names to social media
sites has soared 37%. Go
Daddy isn't the only company to
notice the shift either. Recently VeriSign,
the registry for .com domain
names, stated they saw an increase
of more than 10% for domains
pointing to sites like Facebook
and LinkedIn in Q2 versus Q1.
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GoDaddy
attributes these growing
registrations to customers
wanting to control their
online identity. Having
you own domain allows you to
reinforce your name
or brand rather than the
brand of an individual site
like Facebook, Instagram,
Twitter or whatever
it might be. |
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The domain
can be a perfect
shortcut to your
Facebook profile page and
if you run into a problem
there (they can terminate
your account for any
reason they wish) you can
just point your domain to
another social media site
or to a website of your
own. |
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Michael
McLaughlin
Sr. VP & General
Manager
Go Daddy |
GoDaddy
Senior Vice President and
General Manager Mike
McLaughlin said,
"It became abundantly
clear that people want to
have more control of
their online identity.
Their social media presence
reflects who they are, but
they want an address
that represents them as
well. Also, customers
want the flexibility to
move to a different
platform or create their own
website without giving
everyone a new web
address."
A
good example is Rabbi Dan
Medwin, Publishing Technology Manager for the Central Conference of American
Rabbis, who points his domain,
DanMedwin.com, to his Facebook page. Medwin
said, "The Web is now the de facto place where folks go to learn about a person or
company. I registered DanMedwin.com so, if someday I wanted a personal website, whether a blog or a resume, I'd have it available. It is essentially my personally curated
'brand' of myself for the world."
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Based
on their findings, GoDaddy created
an easier way for customers
to redirect a domain name to
their social media profile. Someone
registering a new domain name can
visit Personal
Domains on GoDaddy and
select Facebook, LinkedIn,
Twitter or Tumblr. The
customer gives GoDaddy the social
media URL that they would like to
point the domain name to during the
checkout process and GoDaddy takes
care of the rest. For those
who already have a domain
name, GoDaddy enables customers to
quickly connect their domain name to
one of 18 popular Web
services, including Facebook,
Etsy and YouTube.
Since
many people are active on multiple
social media sites I have no doubt
that, given how inexpensive new
domain registrations are, some of
those people are already
registering multiple domain
names so they have one to
redirect to each of their
social media site profiles. With
hundreds of new domain extensions
now available, one could even match
their personal name with an
extension that corresponds with the
kind of destination the name directs
too - for example there is already a
.social TLD (operated by
Rightside) and a .chat
TLD (operated by Donuts). If
possible, I would, of course,
recommend getting the .com
version of your personal name first
but if you can't there are still
many viable options to secure
your own brand on the web. If
this trend continues we domain
investors won't be the only ones
holding a "portfolio"
of domains.
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