How Hot Are .Me Domains? This Company Covered By TechCrunch Goes With A Typo Of a Hack

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A Techcrunch story last week passed through the domain name community without comment but it caught my eye since the story was about a tec company not only building their brand around a .Me domain but a Web 2.0 misspell or hack of what other call a true hack

So the domain at question is Recmnd.Me which of course is a misspell of recommend.me, a Flickr.com type of domain if you will

It wouldn’t all be that surprising except that as you might have guessed already the Recmnd.Me folks don’t own recommend.me

Nor do they own Recommendme.com

Recommend.me is going to a placeholder at Godaddy and looks to be for sale, so why they didn’t try to buy it is anyone’s guess.

What makes the story really interesting is that the CEO of the company is by no means a newbie.

Matter of fact Jesse Gant has been involved in some highly successful sites including  Ancestry.com, Buy.com, and RealtyTrac.com.

So when this kind of guy goes with a .Me and especially a Web 2.0 kind of domain in the .Me extension I think that says something about the extension.

For the record the site is a “recommendation and ranking system that might actually help companies find the best candidate for a job”.

 

 

Filed Under: .ME

About Michael Berkens

Michael Berkens, Esq. is the founder and Editor-in-Chief of TheDomains.com. Michael is also the co-founder of Worldwide Media Inc. which sold around 70K domain to Godaddy.com in December 2015 and now owns around 8K domain names . Michael was also one of the 5 Judges selected for the the Verisign 30th Anniversary .Com contest.

Comments

  1. Abdu says

    Their parent company, “Recmnd, Inc.”, actually runs a bunch of other Recmnd sites: http://recmnd.co/

    So they’ve got a .US, .IT, .ME and .CO.

    The WHOIS info also displays “Recmnd Domains” as the Registrant.

    I guess the folks who own the proper spelling of all the above extensions got lucky with the traffic leak to come.

  2. JJ says

    Nothing wrong with hiking the toughest mountain in the world if that’s what you’re about.

  3. Kevin Murphy says

    Is it possible that this is just another tuppenny-ha’penny “throw it at the wall and see if it sticks” sweatshop-style, TechCrunch-fodder startup?

    If so, it might not make sense to splash out on a secondary market domain at first.

    Just a thought.

  4. Brad says

    I am sorry but that is just an awful domain to brand around.

    Even smart people come up with dumb ideas – O.co anyone?

    Brad

  5. windy city says

    …I dunno, I find .me quite a proper fit for certain keywords that are correctly spelled, but since the company itself is an intentional(I assume) misspelling of the word recommend, then I would guess that they are attempting to create their own brand in the usual manner. Good luck to them.

    Younger generations now and those coming aren’t all that concerned about .com’s majestic history as exposure to other “right of the dot” extensions are getting more and more commonplace. If the site suits their needs, that’s about all they need or want to know or care about…

  6. Innocuous says

    windy city wrote:

    > Younger generations now and those coming aren’t all that
    > concerned about .com’s majestic history”

    Yes, but I’m sure they’d take the .com if they could get it. In any event, whether they go with .me or .tv or .com or whatever, it’s all still a crapshoot, and for every one huge success story you hear about, there are thousands who will fail (or at least come no where near to the success they hoped for) that you’ll never hear about.

  7. Gazzip says

    “Even smart people come up with dumb ideas – O.co anyone?

    Brad”

    LMAO, that’s a good way of putting it!

  9. Louise says

    Funny typos are in because the domain industry itself, being insulated, won’t do business on low offers. Just noticed, Trendrr.tv, a company which measures social interaction. It’s like, if it’s NOT a hack or typo, it has less credibility.

  10. Louis says

    Louise, you’ve obviously spent a few thousand dollars on your “domaining” business. Have you even made back 25% (domain sales or ad revenue) of what you’ve spent so far?

    Your posts are usually just so damn dumb that I can’t imagine you’ve done anything but pi*s away a bunch of hard-earned cash.

  11. windy city says

    @ Louise,

    …I would, as a matter of course, ignore the sophmoric and ill-mannered response of Louis. You are intelligent enough to absorb what are the trends taking place and smoke screen responses that only attempt to throw mud and call people out of their name(i.e. dumb) does not decribe you but does describe the offending poster quite well with their apparent lack of respect for others with varying points of view.

    Keep on keepin’ on and thank you for your input, Louise. You are ahead of the curve and are sharing what you are learning.

  12. windy city says

    @ Innocuous

    “Yes, but I’m sure they’d take the .com if they could get it.”

    At this point in time, no doubt. I do. Yet I diversify my portfolio with a wide array, majority .com but not overwhelming and balance I find bodes me well…

    Some may call it a crapshoot with a certain amount of justification. i’ve been fortunate enough to call it an investment and speculation has not been a negative experience.

  14. Ms Domainer says

    *

    Just sold a .me (a noun, not a verb) for $xxxx, so, yes, I believe that the cTLD is heating up right now.

    Louise, ignore those people who are simply rude for the sake of being rude. Name callers are not worth your time.

    *

  16. Louise says

    Invented words and misspells are huge:

    Flickr
    Trendrr
    Tumblr
    Twitpic
    Reddit
    Dataminr
    Tutr.tv

    so if I suggest the domaining industry caused them to be legitimate, it’s a fair observation!

    WindyCity and @ Ms Domainer, thanx for taking my part! Nice sale, DomainBell – yay! 😀

  17. Nadia says

    @ Louis

    It’s never good to poke fun or insult somebody when you don’t know what you’re talking about. I’d bet you would have loved to have had Louise’s .TV sale from a couple of months ago.

    I happen to agree – the Web 3.0 typo phenomenon has been building for the last year. Adopting a unique, if misspelled, name enables these smaller startups to build a brand that stands out from everyone else, is catchy/cutesy (not my preference, but it appeals to the younger generation that has grown up with iChat, texting, abbreviations), and doesn’t require them to shell out 5-6 figures for a properly spelled .com.

    I’ve been anticipating the .ME craze…I don’t have the pockets of MHB but even before about.me it was apparent that everything was trending toward personalization. Local, personal, unique, and catchy. And SHORT. All hot qualities right now.

    I sold Dazzle.me to a Canadian guy last year, who turned it into a daily deals site. I then picked up Jamaica.ME (love it for the sound) and a few others like Abbreviate.ME and Escribir.me. I also go to tech meetups in the DC area, and always see startups using .ME (and .LY). There’s definite appeal there.

  18. Thomas says

    I love finding stuff like that. Find a good end-user and you can make a pretty good sale too, or launch a pretty awesome/unique app or service… It might be with the crap of .com results these days, going with one of those domains is a better way to stand out.

    I still go with a .com, but it’s all about being descriptive, catching attention, being short…whatever works. I started with sites like that, the .me, the .us…they’re great if you target your niche well.

    Still, my main money-maker is a .com at Ne1up.com, so everything has a place…