[At-Large] X marks the spot - a small spot

[bzs at theworld.com]

My take is that some of the most valuable domain brands on the
internet are either made up nonsense words like Twitter or Google, or
words that convey little or nothing about what they do like Amazon and
Apple.

Yet in the many discussions regarding domains and TLDs I've
experienced including attending ICANN meeting for ten years they
almost always seem to revolve around the notion that common dictionary
words or product/service "compelling" words or very short domains are
where to focus all efforts from resale price to various fights like
the current several year fight over .WEB, auctions, making up rules
like for geographic names (are any of them successful?)

Yet so many seemingly valuable domains, by the reasoning of these
discussions, went nowhere like furniture.com, sex.com (is it still the
highest domain name sale price ever? it was), beauty.com, even much
lusted after TLDs like .ART and dare I say it .XXX, .SEX, .PORN.

Sometimes I'll type in common words usually .COM just to see where
they go and mostly they're parked, they go nowhere. Or there's some
1990s quickly thrown together website behind them. OR sometimes they
lead to some big brand name which I guess is useful (e.g., aspirin.com
takes you to Bayer.)

Which leads me to believe that you get a bunch of people in a
discussion on this topic they will basically go into this strange
hallucinatory cargo cult mentality based on pretty much nothing, or
worse, despite actual evidence to the contrary.

I have no idea if changing Twitter to X is brilliant or idiotic or
somewhere in between despite all the product of the chattering classes
which seems to believe they can simulate the entire internet and all
its denizens in their heads.

Far be it for me to defend Elon Musk but at least, as the saying goes,
he put his money where his mouth is.

-- 
        -Barry Shein

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