One saying that sometimes sticks in my mind is "there's a sucker born every minute". I might also add "... and for every sucker, there's 10 new domains that pop up". Domain names are one of the biggest things up on the Internet right now. Stake your claim on the Internet and make a name for yourself they claim. I got news for you, no one cares. If your business happens to be something like Microsoft™, then you damn well better have an address like Microsoft™.com, otherwise it doesn't really matter. I basically wonder if these idiots on TV will eventually figure out that basically no one cares about their TV adds. Yeah sure there are a few adds out there that someone might recall and try, but lets face it, 80% of them are totally waisted because people watching TV aren't on the computer (usually).
Anyway, getting to the point, the biggest craze online in the anime community seems to be getting your own domain name (and don't even get me started on how ".com" is supposed to be used for commercial sites...). Yes for just $75 you can register a domain name with a company and you too can have your own domain. After all, you have YourName.com, how cool is that?! Not very really. Everyone and their dog has a domain name, it's really not that special. Two years ago it was special, but that was before everyone jumped on it and suddenly saturated the Internet with them. I'm not totally against domains, but just why do people get them. I doubt 85% of them even know. The rest seem to think their site is going to be far more spectacular because you can access their site without a slash. Yeah not having a million sub directories in your page address (geocities anyone?) isn't that great, but it's not really worth shelling out money for.
Another thing I really adore <this is sarcasm here> is when people proclaim: "I just opened my new site. Come look at the latest anime domain!". This is about as exciting to me as saying: "Come look at my cat!". Great it's a cat. If you said "Hey come look at my cat, I just shaved it and it's ass is on fire!", then I'll come look at your cat, otherwise its really not that exciting. What it comes down to once again is content, no good content, no one cares.
Here's something else as food for thought. How about people that get really STUPID domain names because everything they could think of was taken. Such as:
IgotThisStupidSuperSailorSenshiDomainBecauseAllTheShorterOnesWereAlreadyTaken.com
as opposed to
cute.megami.net
Personally I'd rather have the second. Not to say you have to find some really cute domain that does hosting, but "something.genericserver.com" is way better than some really stupid domain name. That's because servers usually have a lot of open names, as opposed to only one pool of domain names. Getting "this.that.com" is cheaper too. Another favorite is people that get a domain, then try to find the absolute cheapest place possible to host it. Are you freaking brain dead? You shell out $75 for a domain name, then you go and try to host it at some crap server? Where's the logic in this?
If you got a domain name that you like and you want to keep it because you like it, more power to you, but I'd also wish people would consider what in the hell they're buying. Have any of these people realized that they might not like their domain name in the future? While getting something like crimson.com is probably pretty safe since it's generic and could be about anything, getting something like.... dirtypairflash.com (not to pick on these guys specifically but they make a good example of a bad name) is a really BAD idea. Why? Well it's one anime, and not even that extensive an anime at that. What happens when the series is over or your tired of the series? My favorite example (as is just about anything stupid on the internet) of course involves Sailor Moon domains. Sometimes it amazes me that they'll even allow such stupid domain names to be registered. Not only that, they pop up and go down so fast that it reminds me of those games where you try to hit the gopher on the head with a mallet (you know, the kind at Chucky Cheeze).
Making your site have a memorable address doesn't mean you need to have a domain. It just needs to be fairly short, and more importantly WORTH remembering in the first place.
207.137.96.62/archen/ ??
well maybe I'll just stick to scythe.net/archen/
And I noticed another interesting thing actually. As I do every now and then I went to my links page and started going through them. Not surprisingly a large number of them were broken. But I did notice a trend. Pages that were on sites like tripod or university accounts were still there. Pages that had their own domain were gone entirely. There's a term that references Flotsam and Jetsam of the Internet I wish I could remember at the moment. It's in reference to the fact that there is a lot of abandoned blogs and web pages that are just orphaned on the net but still just sit there like they're frozen in time. It is however interesting that these pages can still be useful in information, while those who had domains but never renewed them are now in the abyss of nothingness.