Buying Domains

On today's episode of 'why am I like this?': domain names. Domain names feel, to me, like a great paradox of the internet.

On one hand, what could be more valuable? Domain scarcity is a real thing — two to five letter domains available for purchase (non-resale) are more or less non existent, along with a VAST majority of memorable single word domains of any length. Even misspellings of popular websites are prohibitively expensive — the other day I saw 'youutube.com' bidding at 90k. The old quote from Mark Twain (paraphrased from Will Rogers) "Buy land, they're not making it anymore." applies here (with the caveat of TLDs, but even those are becoming scarce/unreasonably expensive. Plus we all know nothing touches a .com). Some people browse Zillow endlessly. I was some people, then I bought a house. And now to avoid the weight of a mortgage, I browse domain registrars — waiting to strike gold, that I genuinely have no idea what I'd do with if I found it.

On the other hand, in our current modern moment, do domains matter at all? Between apps and social media, what good is the clout of a memorable web address? From my point of view, a rock solid social media presence is more important (professionally) than a great website for 95% of businesses/individuals. Even if social media and apps didn't exist (lol), we firmly live in a search driven world rather than one dictated by direct navigation. Why learn your friend's numbers when you have your contacts app? Why learn cursive when we're typing 99% of the time? Why nail down a valuable web address when the number of people who type it into their url bar manually will be so slim?

Maybe it's nostalgia for an earlier version of the internet. A (Wild) Wild West that I knew and loved but was too young/ignorant to take full advantage of. Until I figure it out, I'll keep hunting for the last great un-purchased domain name and adding what I find to my little portfolio of unused internet real estate.