Social Media Expert asks: Are Domains Even Relevant Now ?

By: RH

Jay Baer is a social media consultant who defines himself as:

' A hype-free social media and content strategist, speaker, and author and the President of Convince & Convert.

Since 1994, I've worked with more than 700 companies on digital and social strategy, including 29 of the FORTUNE 500. We are social and content accelerators here at C&C, helping organizations tie social to real business. We'll take your program from good to great.

Jay wrote an article that showed just where the lines differ between the world of social media and domaining.

Jay goes back to 1994 and was friends with the guy who sold Beer.com to Molson. In his article today Jay does not see a name like Beer.com as being that important.

Jay wonders how often anyone sees domains anymore. He goes on about URL shorteners, Facebook and Twitter.

You can read his full artilce here and thanks to CateTV for the tip on the article.

Comments

[Nadia]

A personalized, branded domain is as close as one can get to owning something online. Platforms like Facebook and YouTube are great for publishing and promoting content easily, but won't be around forever in their current form. They're ultimately in control of the design and direction, which leaves a business owner very little "control" over changes that might be implemented down the road (features being discontinued, fan page layout changes, potential membership/subscription issues, etc.)

While domains are essentially "leased" from registrars for a number of years, one retains creative control for as long as you have it.

It all boils down to whether you're ok with another company being in control of your brand, or not.

It's the difference between owning a single-family home and renting a numbered parking space in a garage that's controlled by someone else.

I agree that search navigation is in the process of changing things, but now that individuals have more power than ever before, I think the shift from top-down corporate hierarchy will lead to a shift away from reliance on FB, Google+, etc. What if Facebook were to shut down (which is obviously not happening anytime soon)? You can bet those companies & small business owners would want their information to be searchable elsewhere online.

There will eventually be a massive disruption that, so far, nobody has been able to predict yet, but in the steering people away from retaining valuable keyword & brandable assets that are relevant to their businesses is a bad practice.

Lastly, things become relevant or irrelevant as buying practices shift. The author claims that Beer.com may not be as relevant because of how people market and buy beer, but about SocialMedia.com? Would he say "Nah, it's not worth anything" if someone offered it to him?"
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Thank god your comment section is working properly, HD.