Ampers & Dot

As this ridiculous story goes, the URL “Pizza.com” recently sold for $2.6 million - the concept behind the domain investment being that when someone wants a pizza they can just put in “pizza.com” and find an easy slice. And yes, as we’re talking about domain names today I’ve finally decided to link to a story on slashdot - hoping someone will finally get my domain name.

Let me just start off by saying that these people overpaid by about $2.6 million. That’s my stance on this. This was a stupid, stupid move. This seems like an amazingly year 2000 move. I mean, after I heard that Pizza.com sold for that chunk, I expected to read that Britney Spears did something respectable, or that Ross and Rachel were finally getting together… ok, sorry for those.

So let me tell you why I think this was such a stupid investment.

SEO
Frankly, I’m not sure if the person who just ponied up over two and a half million bucks has even heard of Search Engine Optimization, but I can only assume that they haven’t. First off, if you want your site to come up in google when people search for pizza, then for a whole lot less than $2.6 million, I know a good source that could help market your website and improve your search results.

It’s almost as if this person thought that this was actually 2000 and (some) people still used AOL keywords. Or if there weren’t even a search engine market in general- like people just type in random URLs looking for things. In fact, people do search. Google first, then Yahoo, then… well, it really doesn’t matter. People are searching for what they want. And searching for pizza isn’t going to get you pizza.com unless the content behind it is SEOd correctly.

Content

What in the world could the Pizza.com website possibly contain that makes it that valuable? Phone numbers to local pizza places? Google maps does that. Menus to local pizza places? Grubhub or DiningOut do that. All the information on how to make pizza? There are numerous cooking sites out there. The history of pizza? Wikipedia, I guess, but who cares?

My argument here is that there isn’t anything that Pizza.com could host that could be worth that investment. If I want pizza, I will a) go to the website of my favorite chain for delivery (btw, I ordered online from Dominos last weekend and then tracked my cheesy bread through the process. It was life alteringly cool.) b) search for local pizza spots or c) go to Nino’s on Charles St and have a $2 slice in 2 minutes. I won’t go to pizza.com.

Web 2.0 Naming
Here’s where my argument gets fun, as it’s a new twist on one I’ve discussed before: in a world where startup companies have silly names- having a direct and simple URL is no longer relevant. Startups these days have ridiculous names - read my linked post to know my thoughts on this, but what’s important here is that the name doesn’t matter, the content of your site does.

So let’s say that the idea behind pizza.com is awesome. Let’s say it’s actually a functional and cool idea. How about a site that has all localized pizza info, with coupons, delivery and hours, prices and menus, a built in IM system for ordering… and so on. If the idea is that good- why does the name even matter? If the functionality of the site is that good, people will come to it anyway. Quality first, name second. This has to be killing the domain-estate market these days. In a world with Bebos, Yahoos, and Flickrs.

Incidentally, I recently read a funny comment (though I have no idea where) of some news site discussing Twitter- and the first commenter said something like “How can we take the service seriously with a name like ‘twitter’?” and the first response was “yeah, and what about that thing called ‘google’?”

If you site has content or value, then name it whatever the hell you want and it won’t matter. But if all you have is a domain name, then how are you going to become profitable. And more importantly, if all you have is Pizza.com, then how are you going to get your $2.6m back?