Matt The Domain Guru Strikes Again

Near the end of episode 52 of WordPress Weekly, Ma.tt announced on the show that Automattic had finally acquired the awesome WP.com domain name from you guessed it, Yahoo!. Matt mentioned that he has been after this domain ever since the WordPress project started and Jane Wells was actually the one responsible for negotiating the deal. Rumors of the price come in at about eleventy billion dollars. People seem to believe this is a real number so I’ll keep saying it until people realize it’s a reference from a celebrity jeopardy skit on SNL.

Matt is now asking the community what it is they should do with the domain. I’ve come to the conclusion that I think they should scrap or retire the full WordPress.com domain and instead, use WP.com. So, a hosted blog would look like http://username.wp.com What a nice and short domain name. Other than doing that, I can’t think of anything they could use the domain for.

By the way, Matt mentioned in the comments that they are not pursuing the WP.org domain as they have no contact for whomever owns that domain.

As for suggestions brought up by other people, I’ve seen URL Shortening service for WordPress content, a WordPress.com only theme community, mobile version of WordPress.com blogs and a WordPress showcase. The blog post asking for suggestions has 411 responses as the comments have been closed. Most people seem to agree that it would be cool to use WP.com as a URL shortening service as well as the new domain for WordPress.com blogs. I wonder what the Automattic idea machine will crunch out.