A Lesson for Entrepreneurs: Del.icio.us Rebrands as Delicious.com

Awkward domain name slowed growth of site.

Social bookmarking site Delicious has flipped the switch on its brand, encouraging users to visit the easy-to-remember Delicious.com instead of the often typod del.icio.us.

On its blog, the site wrote:

So why did we switch to delicious.com? We’ve seen a zillion different confusions and misspellings of “del.icio.us” over the years (for example, “de.licio.us”, “del.icio.us.com”, and “del.licio.us”), so moving to delicious.com will make it easier for people to find the site and share it with their friends.

Since the Delicious site started as a hobby, founder Joshua Schachter can be forgiven for not using a good domain name. But adding all those dots? He could have picked up an easy-to-remember and easy-to-spell domain name for the cost of a domain registration.

In fact, way back in 2004 he talked regarding the naming mistake:

I somewhat regret using the domain name, since it’s almost impossible to discuss or verify without sounding silly. I’ll probably have to rename it at some point, presumably as something ending in -ster or -zilla or whatever.

Sadly, a number of web 2.0 entrepreneurs saw the success of del.icio.us and thought it would be cool to create domain hacks themselves, resulting in poorly chosen domain names that sent plenty of traffic to the wrong place.

The firm, now a part of Yahoo, purchased Delicious.com in 2005.