URL Extensions... Yes or No
 

What do you guys think of URL extensions, do you think they will be the hot choice for new startups? Do you think already established and successful websites will convert over to a URL extension to shorten their websites .com URL? Instagr.am is the first one that really caught my attention and I was just wondering what you guys thought about them.

One of our concepts uses them as part of the name. The fm stuff is getting popular too. What you have to remember is that search engines still like .com the best and everyone wants to put ".com" after your web address by default (this is the bigger issue in my opinion). You will wind up having to explain to people that your website is NOT a .com... this gets especially confusing if you have a .co extension. Even with .am, .fm, .me and so on you still wind up explaining it to people, "no no, it's not teamspeedme.com, it's teamspeed DOT me".

Great points, thanks!! That makes sense how it could definitely become confusing to people. And you never know, it's possible a site could inadvertently send visitors to a competitors website if the wrong URL was entered.

Anyone under 30 shouldnt have a problem understanding that there is no .com at the end. That being said I can see haw it would create some confusion at first, but that shuld pass over quickly as it becomes more commonplace.

That can definitely happen given the number of domain squatters out there. The problem now is when you settle on one URL, you have buy an additional 10 or so due to the number of extensions so competitors or squatters don't. The squatters wind up wanting a multiple of whatever it's worth.

Definitely consider if being found is your goal, because search engines do still prefer .com. However if you redirect traffic from a pre-existing .com which gets lots of visits and is aged, it's not going to matter and I imagine it'd pull the new domain up in the rankings.
You would be surprised how many people do not understand that there isn't a .com, that and it has become a reflex to type ".com" at the end of a URL. It's like we're pre-programmed. As you correctly point out, this will change over time. Not sure if it's better or worse that now people are going to be getting confused over the extension.

However, if your business involves advertising the site, that's very important. You can still get ranked, it just takes longer. I believe they view .com as more "valid" or something? It's not quite clear to me, someone more involved in the industry can explain it better than I can.

I still type .com after anything habitually. Instagram loads the same with either, so maybe take that into account and cover your whole basis.

It's confusing to many I have polled for my own take. We have tspd.co for teamspeed but never push it.

I have a .co and people think it's a mistake when I tell them or give them a card, I think by far that is the extension most often confused with .com

Maybe it's a Canadian thing. I'm use to to typing .ca for so many Canadian sites. DJ when you own more then one domain suffix wouldn't you just redirect traffic to the main site?

Oh I don't doubt that. I think the international community will be far quicker to adapt to extensions than the US. Canada has .ca, the UK is .co.uk and other countries have the .co.(country abbreviation).

Like slord pointed out, even instagram has the .com which he types, so you while you can promote with a different extension, you almost NEED the .com.