I was following some of the domain hacking discussion on the fo.rtuito.us digg commentary. The general consensus for most people is that gratuitous domain hacking can only lead to confusion and annoyance. I know that when I was first using del.icio.us, it was a pain to type in the url, since I could never remember where all the dots went. But, after a while (like most things), the dot positions got ingrained into my head.

del.icio.us is one of the few domain hacks that have made it big, alongside others like blo.gs. Wikipedia has a nice article detailing some of the history behind domain hacks and their uses. Personally, I think that domain hacks of the kind like fo.rtuito.us can be a challenge for most people to remember (I think the base word “fortuitous” is already a stretch for most!) For a lot of these sites, it’s this split second kind of delay when thinking that can drive away customers.

If you’re still thinking about domain hacking your next web app, try using Xona.com’s domain hacks search, which will suggest different domain hack combinations for a given word. I tried out my name “james yu”, to see if there was anything interesting.

And lo and behold, it turns out that my last name “yu” is perfect for a domain hack, since “yu” is the top-level domain for Yugoslavia. I could theoretically have “james.yu” as my url. But alas, Yugoslavia only allows special agencies to hold a customized second level domain. The best I could do would be “james.co.yu”, which isn’t nearly as cool. The other suggestions included hacks with slashes in them, like “jame.sy/u/” and “jam.es/yu”. If you think remembering dot positions in urls is a pain, try remembering combinations of dots and slashes.

I think I’ll just stick with jamesyu.org.