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what's more important - .com or name?

I am in the very early stages of what I hope to be a very profitable company. It is solely an online presence (think Digg, twitter, etc...), and there will be no brick and mortor store. I am also not taking any outside investing, and plan on funding it myself.

After much deliberation, I have settled on what I would like to call my company. The only problem is the .com has been taken. As far as I can tell, it isn't being used, someone has just been squatting on the domain for 6 years.

I could contact him and offer to buy it out, but I am hesitant to spend money if I don't have to.

How important is the .com domain these days? I have considered .co, but am a little hesitant to go that route. From what I have read and observed, most people google the site before they try the address bar, but I don't know hoe reliable the data is.

If you were creating the next (Pinterest, lets say) is a .com essential, or will another TLD work?

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There are plenty of such questions here, e.g. what's more important - .com or name?. – dnbrv Feb 8 '12 at 4:47
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Hi Joe, welcome to the site! As @dnbrv mentioned, this topic has been discussed to death on this site. To get you started, take a look at the linked question, as well as answers.onstartups.com/questions/33204/… answers.onstartups.com/questions/14496/… answers.onstartups.com/questions/19238/co-domain-names and lastly take a look at the domain tag – Zuly Gonzalez♦ Feb 8 '12 at 5:08

marked as duplicate by dnbrv, Zuly Gonzalez♦ Feb 8 '12 at 5:00

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Frankly, the domain name doesn't matter that much. Yes, all things being equal, a dot-com is better. You'll lose some traffic when you use something else. But since all good names are taken, you'll be force to use a less memorable name, so either way you lose.

Truth be told, having a great product is way more important. Spend an hour looking for a domain name you are happy with (if need be, go on sedo.com and see if you like anything, although I hate encouraging domain squatters). Then move on and focus back on building a great product.

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