What do Google, YouTube, MySpace, Digg, Flikr, and del.icio.us all have in common?

There are a few things. First and foremost though, they are each 100% branded names. None of them are names that you would naturally type into your web browser if you didn’t already know what each site was. Obviously these companies have all become phenomenally successful. Google was recently valued at $100+ billion dollars. YouTube was recently purchased by Google for $1.6 billion dollars. MySpace was sold to Fox News Corp for $800 million dollars. Yahoo acquired flikr and del.icio.us for around $30 million a piece. The only question remaining is when will the owners of Digg.com decide it’s time to sell, and to whom for how much?

The numbers seem to speak for themselves. In the online world branded names are king. Who wants to go to (for example) “SocialNetworking.com” when “MySpace.com” sounds so much cooler? Why would you go to search.com when you could just “Google” what you want to find? “Do you YouTube?” Do you want to “Digg” it? Do you find certain websites and news stories “Delicious?”

Over and over again branded names are often times attached to clever marketing slogans and catch phrases. Geico has their gecko. Monster.com is.. a job site? Who would have suspected? A better question might be “Who has never been to Monster.com?” Their ads are everywhere.

During the 90’s and the dot com boom three letter company names were considered the ideal in many cases. Three letter names automatically gave a new company a desirable image. Companies like AT&T, IBM, MCI, UPS are to thank for that. Interestingly enough, every last 3 letter .com domain name was purchased by 2001. For a while these domains continued to be popular in the after market, selling for several thousands of dollars easily.  Did this three letter trend continue? Hardly. In the last 10 years companies have realized that branded names often provide them with a unique image as well. Companies were now looking for hip and exciting names that attracted their target audience. Often times this meant making up words, changing the spelling of words, or just creating a catch phrase.

Once again, just like with the three letter names, brandable names became the buzz. People began registering  anything short that sounded catchy. The benefit of using a brandable domain is that they are usually very cheap. After all, if the name means nothing to anybody yet, why would it be expensive? There are two sides to this coin however. Take Google for example. The name was derrived from the slang number “agoogle”. Don’t believe me? Type in agoogle.com and see for yourself… But who would have ever thought to go to google.com to search the internet? The biggest problem with branding is that it requires hard work, lots of money, and lots of marketing. The more exposure the name gets, the more it will begin to stick in people’s minds.

It really comes down to two things. First, how much do you want to spend to promote your website? And second, how easy to you want it to be for competition to steal your image? The more branded you are the more unique your website will feel. There are thousands of search engines on the internet. There is only one Google. Social Networking websites are popping up left and right, but, there is only one MySpace. Would you rather Digg a site or Pligg it? The numbers don’t lie. If your brandable name sticks in the consumers mind first, everything else is just.. well, everything else.