This isn’t really hot news, but it was news to me when George Oates mentioned it in passing during her piece at Dconstruct 07.

In an age of curious-sounding Web-site names, “Flickr” came largely by accident. The domain owner of “flicker.com” wouldn’t sell, so Caterina suggested “Flickr,” which Butterfield says made the service stand out. “We always had to spell it out for people, which helped make it stick,” he notes.
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Unsurprisingly, correctly spelled domains get loads of hits from people who don’t know how to spell web 2.0 brand names, and assume that the correct spelling would be the right way to do it.

So if you mis-spell your brand name just for a bit of ‘web 2.0 distinctiveness’, are you really doing yourself any favours?

After all, just two weeks ago, Del.icio.us decided to make the switch to delicious.com. How very sensible.