TechRadar Article

From TechRadar:

Twitter – in case you hadn’t noticed – is becoming so mainstream there’s now even at least one third-party business dedicated to finding the best available account names.

The Twitter open account search comes courtesy of Domain Pigeon, which previously focused on searching for unregistered URLs, so extending that to the microblogging phenom is hardly a stretch.

Three letters

Naturally, the most sought-after Twitter usernames are the shortest ones – three characters is the minimum, of which about 18,000 are still available, we’re told.

Before you rush off to see if xxx or abc are still up for grabs, be warned that Domain Pigeon requires a one-off membership fee of $40 (£27).

Considering that, maybe your next Tweet can be something like “@domainpigeon You’ve got to be kidding.”

Not kidding. :D

Obsessable.com Article

From Domain Pigeon’s profile on Obsessable.com:

Domain Pigeon is a website that categorizes and makes available unclaimed domain names and Twitter usernames. You can search for specific names or browse through untaken domain and Twitter names by popularity or alphabetic lists. For a fee, you can peruse the shorter and more popular Twitter names of only three or four letters, or look for both Twitter names and domain names at the same time to see if they match. The site also lets you know how many of the sought-after names are left and when the next update will occur.

Domain Pigeon makes it to Digg’s Front Page!

Domain Pigeon got posted on Digg–awesome.

And while I wasn’t here to see it, according to @diggfrontpage the link made Digg’s homepage this evening!

At the time of this writing, it’s currently on page 2:

Here’s the description:

Domainsquatting is one thing, but what about Twittersquatting? Domain search tool Domain Pigeon is now showing users which usernames are still open.

I’m not a huge fan of the “Twitter squatting” association but hey, can’t complain too much.

Lessons Learned Article

From cazcaz.net:

Matt Mazur, the founder of a web service called Domain Pigeon which helps people to find great domain names, has written down a great article about the first 6 weeks of his startup. He mentioned about DomainPigeon’s traffic stats analysis, business model changes, marketing strategies, design elements, targeting the right audience and lots of things more. That is really an inspritional article for the ones who need some :)

After reading all the article I just want to take your consideration into a few important lines from the text as a summary:

Traffic is not as important as you think to make money

If you have a good business plan and a revenue model then you can still make money with a few hundred visitors a day. Domain Pigeon is a nice example for this, It gets only 1700 visitors per week right now, but still making enough money to stay alive.

Design of a project always comed second (except special conditions such as if you re building a DeviantArt :). Do not stick with the design, focus on the content, idea and business plan. You will solve your problems about the design, anyways. Here is the deal:

Bad idea, great design – You stop working and move on.
Bad idea, bad design – You also stop working and move on, but at least you didn’t spend all that time on the design.
Great idea, bad design – Now that you know your product is one that people want, go ahead and make it look good.
Great idea, great design – If you’re lucky or talented enough to be in this category, go after it with everything you’ve got.

Decide on your target audience very well. Make your target as nich and narrow as possible.

If you say; “I’m targeting the people who would like to register a domain” it becomes like “I’m Walmart, I target people who want to buy things.”