does dot-com really matter?

I'll answer the question before even starting this one: Yes, having the dot-com matters.

Ever since I decided to start blogging, I made it a point to use menga.net as the place where I would do my blogging. However, as time goes on I'm reminded over and over that most people think "internet" means "dot-com" and dot-com alone.

I am going to be moving this entire web site my dot com (so you might want to bookmark that now). I've owned that just as long as menga.net. If I recall correctly, this domain is just a few weeks younger than menga.net is when I registered it way back in 1999.

It's not that I have any problem getting traffic to menga.net. And if/when I move this site to my dot-com domain, the traffic will eventually rise up over there. The problem is having people remember the domain name. To this day, if I tell someone "My web site is menga dot net", some will reply with "Okay, so that's menga dot net dot com?"

I'm not kidding.

Very frustrating and outright annoying.

What's even more annoying is getting people to remember my e-mail address. Same deal as the domain name. I say my e-mail address is "rich at menga dot net", and sure as anything, they'll reply with "Oh! So it's rich at menga dot com?"

NO. ARRRHHGHGHHHH...

I missed the boat with the dot-com so I don't have it.

So why the dot-com domain?

For those who remember, that domain was my biz site for a few years. I guess you can say I have some emotional attachment to that dot-com because it was the original name of my BBS (prior to popular internet). The name stuck - and anyone who has ever been aware of the name has never forgotten it.

In addition, it's not uncommon for biz owners to blog and blog often. So I might as well chuck it all into a single dot-com domain that I actually like. Makes sense to me.

As I said above, the web traffic will eventually build up on the dot-com. Although menga.net gets a fair amount of search engine hits, I know I'll be sacrificing that by moving over to the dot-com, but hey.. the dot-com is the way to go.

To those who currently e-mail me regularly, my "rich at menga dot net" e-mail address will auto-forward to my new one, and menga.net will also auto-forward to the dot-com once I have that all set up.