What if Facebook wasn’t called Facebook?
Published by Michael Vu August 11th, 2007 in Facebook, Facebook Marketing.Facebook is the hottest thing in the Internet right now, and is showing no signs of slowing down. But would have things turned out the way they have if Facebook wasn’t called Facebook? It may be silly to think that a name would have such a significant impact on the success of a venture, but this is one situation in which it probably does.
Back when Zuckerberg started Facebook, it was called TheFacebook and was a hobby website to connect students at Harvard University. The name Facebook.com had already been registered in 1997, so Zuckerberg registered the name, TheFacebook.com in 2004.
Within two months of its launch, TheFacebook expanded to other Boston schools, all Ivy League schools and Stanford. It continued to grow rapidly, reaching almost every single college in the US. Then in 2005, TheFacebook buys the name Facebook.com and is officially called Facebook after that. Restricting accounts to only those with a email addresses from a school, Zuckerberg clearly was focused on connecting students. An “online yearbook” was the concept that he was absolutely pursuing.
With that said, what if the names yearbook.com, classmates.com and myyearbook.com were available at the time Zuckerberg started this “hobby”? There’s a VERY high probability that Zuckerberg would have purchased one of those names instead of thefacebook.com. Had he purchased any of those other names, Facebook would not have been able to open the doors to everyone in 2006 - it just doesn’t make sense conceptually. You can’t open up a site with a name like classmates.com or yearbook.com to non-students because it implies that it is a school-related thing. Even the word facebook, by definition is:
1. A reference book or electronic directory made up of individuals’ photographs and names.
2. A college publication distributed at the start of the academic year by university administrations with the intention of helping students get to know each other better.
Fortunately for Zuckerberg, the word ‘facebook’ is not widely known and weakly associated with schools. This gave them the flexibility to scale out of the college/school context - something that Yearbook.com and Classmates.com wish they can do, but can’t. Without opening the doors to all users, Facebook wouldn’t have been able to create such a powerful platform - and without such a platform, they would not be as hot as they are right now.
So is this Facebook phenomenon in part due to a fortunate coincidence or was it just incredible foresight? My bet is on the former. If anything, this should be a lesson of domain name strategy, especially for those swinging for the fences. Below are some key domain name registration dates that are pretty interesting:
- Yearbook.com registered on Jan 4, 1995
- Classmates.com registered on Nov 16, 1994
- Facebook.com first registered on March 29, 1997
- Myyearbook.com registered on Nov 1, 2000
- Schoolyearbook.com registered on July 11, 2001
- Eyearbook.com registered on May 26, 2003
- iYearbook.com registered Jan 3, 2004
- Thefacebook.com registered on Jan 11, 2004
- Facebook buys facebook.com for $200,000 on August 23, 2005.
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4 Responses to “What if Facebook wasn’t called Facebook?”
- 1 Pingback on Feb 4th, 2008 at 12:24 pm
I found this post to be particularly interesting. I think everyone has overlooked this because of the immense hype behind Facebook.
I would have to agree, that if Facebook wasn’t called Facebook, they probably would not be enjoying the success that they are right now…maybe not even close. Thanks for these great insights, it has really made me think about branding, naming, and domain strategy.
Hmmm….interesting. Amazing how little decisions early on can have such a big impact.
I wonder what Classmates.com and Yearbook.com must be thinking…