Near the end of episode 52 of WordPress Weekly, Ma.tt announced on the show that Automattic had finally acquired the awesome WP.com domain name from you guessed it, Yahoo!. Matt mentioned that he has been after this domain ever since the WordPress project started and Jane Wells was actually the one responsible for negotiating the deal. Rumors of the price come in at about eleventy billion dollars. People seem to believe this is a real number so I’ll keep saying it until people realize it’s a reference from a celebrity jeopardy skit on SNL.
Matt is now asking the community what it is they should do with the domain. I’ve come to the conclusion that I think they should scrap or retire the full WordPress.com domain and instead, use WP.com. So, a hosted blog would look like http://username.wp.com What a nice and short domain name. Other than doing that, I can’t think of anything they could use the domain for.
By the way, Matt mentioned in the comments that they are not pursuing the WP.org domain as they have no contact for whomever owns that domain.
As for suggestions brought up by other people, I’ve seen URL Shortening service for WordPress content, a WordPress.com only theme community, mobile version of WordPress.com blogs and a WordPress showcase. The blog post asking for suggestions has 411 responses as the comments have been closed. Most people seem to agree that it would be cool to use WP.com as a URL shortening service as well as the new domain for WordPress.com blogs. I wonder what the Automattic idea machine will crunch out.
imho WordPress.com has to stay the reference rather than WP.com. After all, it is a question of branding, and everybody knows WordPress now, and having it in the URL of many blogs is also part of the branding. Remove it and you destroy a part of the branding built arounf WordPress, don’t you think? Unless Matt wants to rebuild completely the image of WordPress of course.
I would vote for the Mobile version of WordPress.com. There are already dozens of shortening services, Automattic just bought a good one so why bother?
But like you, I am curious about the choices from WP team! You can be sure they had an idea before to buy the domain!!
In order, I would go with the hosted blog service first for the shortened URL; then, with the URL shortening service. It seems these ideas go hand-in-hand, perhaps Automattic can sort out a way to do both?!
If they did that, Jeff, wouldn’t they haven’t to shut down any site with ‘wp’ in their domain to ‘avoid confusion’, for example, wptavern.com? Hmmmm…
@hd-J – Hmm valid point regarding branding but I could see them offering a choice to end users on which domain they would like to have as part of their URL. I bet the majority would pick WP.com.
@Edward Caissie – What do you mean by hosted blog service for the shortened URL? You mean create a new WordPress.com built on top of WP.com?
@Patrick D. – I didn’t think of that. Man, I hope not, that would make it a REAL PAIN to have a WordPress related domain if you could not have
@Patrick D. – As Jeff says, it would be VERY hard to have a WordPress related domain if you couldn’t include WP in the domain! However, as they have stated on their site, they are happy with that just not the full!
I personally don’t think they could enforce people like that is because it could be something completely UNRELATED to WordPress, afterall, it’s just 2 letters!
Just my honest opinion though, each to their own! :)
Thanks
Mark