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Ask HN: Has anyone followed Paul Graham's “Change your name” advice with success

3 points by jonathan-kosgei 4y ago

I'm referring to the advice in this essay http://www.paulgraham.com/name.html.

groffee 4y ago
I'm not sure that advice is relevant now (if it ever was) no-one bothers with .com domains anymore.
- jonathan-kosgei 4y ago
  I've heard a few anecdotes of sites getting significantly better google rankings after switching to a .com.
  - liberia 4y ago
    And you can register short (expired) .coms providing they’re not parked or up for auction.
Normille 4y ago
Article from 2015. Hardly relevant now, when one of the biggest companies in the world is happily using an `.xyz` domain.
- dyingkneepad 4y ago
  Which one would that be??
  - go_to_moon 4y ago
    https://abc.xyz/ https://abc.xyz/
    - muzani 4y ago
      In a sense, they literally changed the company name to make this domain name work.
    - dyingkneepad 4y ago
      Nobody accesses that. Everybody goes to their .com domain name, everybody still refers to them as Google instead of Alphabet.
muzani 4y ago
This is the era where people go to Facebook by searching Facebook on Bing or Google.
muzani 4y ago
This is probably a story to that point though: http://www.mycreative.com.my/news_events/malaysian-startup-fashion-valet-spills-all-on-their-mistakes-so-you-can-lea http://www.mycreative.com.my/news_events/malaysian-startup-f... "First, whenever there were writeups about them, their linkback would wrongly be published as FashionValet.com instead of .net, leading to some confusion. After this happened too many times, and the team got tired of explaining the reasoning behind choice, they decided to acquire the .com address." It was also around the time PG wrote that article, so maybe it was just a thing of the era.
lee101 4y ago
I had to switch from textgenerator.app.nz to https://text-generator.io https://text-generator.io it's because facebook randomly blocked my entire app.nz + subdomains from being shared on facebook. I have no idea why app.nz is blocked, its a shame because there's some free products i've been building there to help kids read (readingtime.app.nz) and their creativity (joydrop.app.nz). Maybe the app.nz domain was used for bad things before i bought it, that's my only stab in the dark at why they might have blocked it. Moving domains could help in these situations where you have been false positive flagged then obliterated by some internet police style company e.g. FAANG or stripe etc.

I'm referring to the advice in this essay http://www.paulgraham.com/name.html.

groffee 4y ago

I'm not sure that advice is relevant now (if it ever was) no-one bothers with .com domains anymore.

jonathan-kosgei 4y ago
I've heard a few anecdotes of sites getting significantly better google rankings after switching to a .com.
- liberia 4y ago
  And you can register short (expired) .coms providing they’re not parked or up for auction.

Normille 4y ago

Article from 2015. Hardly relevant now, when one of the biggest companies in the world is happily using an `.xyz` domain.

dyingkneepad 4y ago
Which one would that be??
- go_to_moon 4y ago
  https://abc.xyz/ https://abc.xyz/
  - muzani 4y ago
    In a sense, they literally changed the company name to make this domain name work.
  - dyingkneepad 4y ago
    Nobody accesses that. Everybody goes to their .com domain name, everybody still refers to them as Google instead of Alphabet.

muzani 4y ago

This is the era where people go to Facebook by searching Facebook on Bing or Google.

muzani 4y ago

This is probably a story to that point though: http://www.mycreative.com.my/news_events/malaysian-startup-fashion-valet-spills-all-on-their-mistakes-so-you-can-lea http://www.mycreative.com.my/news_events/malaysian-startup-f... "First, whenever there were writeups about them, their linkback would wrongly be published as FashionValet.com instead of .net, leading to some confusion. After this happened too many times, and the team got tired of explaining the reasoning behind choice, they decided to acquire the .com address." It was also around the time PG wrote that article, so maybe it was just a thing of the era.

lee101 4y ago

I had to switch from textgenerator.app.nz to https://text-generator.io https://text-generator.io it's because facebook randomly blocked my entire app.nz + subdomains from being shared on facebook. I have no idea why app.nz is blocked, its a shame because there's some free products i've been building there to help kids read (readingtime.app.nz) and their creativity (joydrop.app.nz). Maybe the app.nz domain was used for bad things before i bought it, that's my only stab in the dark at why they might have blocked it. Moving domains could help in these situations where you have been false positive flagged then obliterated by some internet police style company e.g. FAANG or stripe etc.