This past week I have been going through a website concept side-project related to “good” and so I did what one does in such instances. Step 1) I googled the concept in various terms to see if it existed. Seeing a general lack of similar concepts, I then went to Step 2), which is to start searching for Domains. Of course 99.9% of single word dot coms are taken, but a good hunk are taken in other popular domain extensions as well. People have been getting more creative lately, straying from dot coms to do “ly”s, etc. I searched all over in “ly”s and “ist”s and more. I used an online dictionary and thesaurus, combining words, smooshing syllables, swapping vowels out. Imagine using the world famous browser — “gug.le”. A lot of the ones I tried are parked and listed on domain sellers for thousands. And who’s interested in putting down $10k for a side project that may or may not amount to anything?

Midway through this quest I came across the below article by Peter Gasca: http://www.entrepreneur.com/article/234845. In it he states:

“In the past, the most significant barrier to establishing a name was if it was copyrighted or already registered as a business in your state. Today, your business needs to secure website domains and accounts with sites around the web, such as Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, Instagram, StumbleUpon, Reddit, etc. (there are hundreds). “

Gasca also believes that company names should be no more than 5-10 characters. Oy.

Let’s summarize. We really want a company name from 5-10 letters. And most single word domains are gone. So we’ve got to come up with small words that pieced together make a great name, easy to remember, and is still short. Oh, and you need availability across url and common social media.

So I started to think more about my concept — really it isn’t just about good, it’s about how good begets good. But that’s too long. There is also a growing ocncept of an “internet of things”. So I started toying with internet of good… still too long. What about shortening internet to net? NetofGood. Pretty cool… even has a nice double meaning since Net is also a financial term for what’s left after deductions from the gross amount. Interesting since no person/company is perfect — but suggests doing more good than “bad” might work out.

It’s nothing yet… but I’ve got the dot com domain, twitter, and instagram for NetofGood. For $13 and probably 2 hours+ of googling… worth holding on to for a year to see if it becomes something.

But the real question that came to mind when doing all this… if it is this hard now… how hard is it going to be for future generations to start businesses if they can’t secure a name across these platforms?

What will names be… when there are none left?