"Dotcom" redeems itself slowly
"If someone says their company is a dot-com now, I know what that means," Wharton School of Business professor Peter Fader told the E-Commerce Times. "It tells the consumer what to expect. It's part of the brand message."
What is different this time around is that "dot-com" it is being used more judiciously. Where there once was a rush to append the suffix to every company title, now it is found more often where it logically fits.
"There has been a realization that it's not just a phrase to toss around; it means something," Fader said.
For instance, Expedia (Nasdaq: EXPE) is appending "dot-com" to its name in its advertising tagline jingle. Doing so makes sense because the company is unlikely ever to require a real-world presence, in contrast with some early dot-coms that could have benefited from straddling the Internet and the physical world.