I never thought about it.

I'd have to get six domain names for the six kids and renew them for years-on-end. What if they want to come up with their own, something that reflects their life or interests? Will they feel obligated to use the ones I chose? Will they want to use their legal name, or be more anonymous?

What if this is like a parent of 1973 diligently (and with an eye on the future) building a child's 8-track collection?

I see no harm in it, though. Perhaps wasted expense? It's not like domain names are terribly expensive, though. I have my own domain for my blog, and it is cheap.

You're better off putting $9 a year into a mutual fund for your kid. :)

I thought the article made a great point about security. What if someone could just put in your child's name plus .com and then glean all kinds of personal info from their personal webpage?

Also, I liked what the article said about how technology changes. Who knows how we'll be lookingup websites in 20 years. Or what the internet will look like, or how it will be navigated.

What's interesting to me is how two of the major objections seem to cancel each other out.

On the one hand, search technology such as Google render possession of a .com address of limited value-- and the value of a .com address will likely continue to drop as technology changes. The essence of this objection is that people can easily find each other without it, so it's unnecessary.

The other objection is security-- you don't want people to be able to easily find out information about your kids. But based upon the prior objection, that would appear to be a problem anyway, at least for kids who are web-active.

As for the investment angle, what would $9 a year get you? If you're wildly optimistic, maybe it gets you a thousand bucks in twenty years. On the other hand, maybe the domain name is worth, professionally speaking, thousands to the child. You're aware of how much domain names can run these days for prominent names. I wish I had bought the domain name for my last name a few years ago when I saw it was available, because now a car dealership has it and I'll bet they would've paid me a few bucks for it.

And I'm still trying to wrap my head around the argument for search technology making a domain name useless. If anybody has any explanations as to how that might work, I'd like to hear it. But while I get the "the internet is changing every day, who knows what it will be like in twenty years" argument, in principle, I have a hard time applying that to this situation.

Consider that every day, more people are getting on the internet and the information available is proliferating, as is our capacity to sort through it. The amount of "noise" generated just when I google an average Joe's (fairly unique) name is astounding. I have a hard time fathoming that anything developed over the next twenty years will make it easier to find someone through search technology than it is now just typing in a simple .com url.

My two cents

I've never had a desire to own my name domain (and I own quite a number of domain names). My kids, three of whom already have their own websites (two are Bloo bloggers :-) have never asked for their names.

It's a small expense, if it's something you want to do, I'd go for it.

I would take issue with this: "I have a hard time fathoming that anything developed over the next twenty years will make it easier to find someone through search technology than it is now just typing in a simple .com url."

Well, now you're just being silly :-). First off, the rate of technological innovation in the area of search engines makes 20 years into an eternity, relatively speaking.

But, more importantly, if you have a friend named Mike Wyzowski, for instance, and you search mikewyzowski.com, great, you found it. Well, I mean, you found one of the Mike Wyzowskis in the world. Until you go there, you don't really know. It could be another one, not your friend, etc.

By definition, the number of people who own their name domain will be low. So most people, searching for others, will still just type their name in Google (or whatever it is we search on then - Google may be a thing of the past).

I'm pretty computer savvy, and I've never, ever searched for a friend by typing in theirname.com. Because the chances of them actually owning their name domain is small.

At best, I think there might just be a cool factor to it. I don't discount that.

"By definition, the number of people who own their name domain will be low. So most people, searching for others, will still just type their name in Google"

Not sure if I was making sense here. Let me 'splain more. Since only one person in the world can own, for instance, the BillJones.com domain, if you know a Bill Jones you can be pretty sure he isn't the person who owns that domain, probability-wise. Even people with more unique names still have name duplication with other people.

How much better to type in "Bill Jones Houston Engineer" in google, if, for instance, the Bill Jones you know lives in Houston and is an Engineer. At least then you have a decent chance of finding the person, versus billjones.com

I think you're misunderstanding me, De. My thinking is that you could tell people how to find you on the web by telling them your url is myname.com, not that they would find your url through a search engine.

My question is: given the information being added to the internet, and the problems you raise regarding how to sort through that mound of information, how will search technology help me find Mike Wyzowski more quickly and easily than just typing in his name as a url, assuming that I know he has mikewyzowski.com?

Just in case that last part wasn't clear, here's my scenario.

You run into Bill Jones. Maybe he's an old friend you just saw for the first time in ten years and you want to stay in touch with him, or maybe he's an accountant you want to have do your taxes.

The question is: how do you get/stay in touch with him via the web? If he tells you all you have to do is type in billjones.com, that's easy, right? How could search technology possibly make that any easier?

Now, if you are starting at the other end-- you're trying to find Bill Jones your old friend, or Bill Jones the accountant, or trying to figure out which is which, and you don't know that he has billjones.com, then you're obviously right, having the domain name doesn't help.

Just teasing things out a bit--

I could see in the future that, with the glut of information being added to the web every day, search engines might actually become more difficult to use as a means to find people than they are now.

The search technology has to advance in order to keep up with all the new information being added to the web, not to mention the information from years past.

I can imagine that, as domain names become more scarce and the web becomes even more the predominant place for conducting business and social transactions, that a business or a solo professional might have an ip address listed on a business card, in the yellow pages (if they're still around!) just like we have our phone/fax #'s listed now.

That would solve the specificity problem that search engines aren't really equipped to nail down.

I think I see your point better, Alan, and - yes - having your own name domain is probably a good idea if you think about it. I don't have a desire to, but that's just me (and I'm sure my name's already taken)

"I could see in the future that, with the glut of information being added to the web every day, search engines might actually become more difficult to use as a means to find people than they are now.

The search technology has to advance in order to keep up with all the new information being added to the web, not to mention the information from years past."

I have no doubt the search technology will keep up.

Also, keep in mind that there are a whole lot of people who don't want to be found on the internet.

Going back to the original article, I thought they missed a critical argument against giving a kid hisname.com to use while growing up: he might use it.

While it might be a lot of fun right now, kids are bound to say lots of stupid things as they grow up. Or even if they don't, it's likely that their friends will and it will end up on their site.

These are the kinds of things that might make scare a potential employer off. The less closely those kind of things are annexed to one's name, the better. So for example, De, your kids' sites don't appear to be connected to their names in such a way that a search engine would have a reasonable shot at pulling them up, especially several years from now. Not that they're saying anything stupid, but still.

For some people, it will make a lot more sense to have your own domain than others. If you're a free agent type of professional, who may move from job to job, or whose livelihood is dependent upon a public name or reputation, then it makes a lot more sense than if you're looking to make your mark in a corporate environment.

I don't see the reason I would want to rent my children's names as URLs. My first blush is that it's something done from a perspective on today, not tomorrow. My children will interact online when they grow up and have the opportunity. I don't need to try to engineer what they will do years ahead of time.

My friend's son went online and typed his mom's name.com -- the woman that came up was not his mommy but she definitely enjoyed showing all her mommy parts. He had a hard time understanding why his mom's name was associated with that. Sorry I'm not really on point....just rambling.