Tell HN: .ly domains starting to have problems (letter.ly)

Re:Tell HN: .ly domains starting to have problems (letter.ly) by rexreed on Monday April 04, 2011 @01:16PM (#2407452)

I don't think the .LY registrars or the high-profile .LY domain owners (such as bit.ly) would have agreed with your assertion that the .LY domain name put them at a substantially higher risk than registering a .COM. If so, what rational business person would risk their business, brand, and traffic on the .LY domain? If you assert that a .LY domain doesn't / didn't have an intrinsically higher risk than a .COM, then my original statement isn't the false dichotomy that you think it is.

Of course, here in April 2011 now we know that the risk was there all along. And now, any sane / rational business owner should think twice / again about registering a .LY domain.

But given that 12 months ago, the above statement that a .LY represented a substantially higher risk than a .COM would have been laughed at. Who would have thought that there would be civil war in Libya in 2009 or 2010? If you did, then maybe a job in political science awaits you.

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Re:Tell HN: .ly domains starting to have problems (letter.ly) by MatthewPhillips on Monday April 04, 2011 @03:39PM (#2408159)

People were saying it was risky 12 months ago, and 24 months ago. Bit.ly chose their domain because it's short, and they probably couldn't afford as short of a name for a .com. In retrospect they should have taken bit.us or something similar.

Now their plan seems to be to distribute amongst many domains (having used j.mp a lot recently) so there's no single point of failure and that seems to be working as well.

Bit.ly's a unique case though, and doesn't represent the fad of taking .ly domains because it turns your company name into an adverb.

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