Why would Clarity use .FM for its domain?

If you'd like to talk to a professional namer, there are several of us on Clarity.fm. However, we generally charge for brainstorming, research, and consultation. Typically, a full service naming initiative takes days or weeks rather than minutes. That said, I have found Clarity.fm calls do provide enough space to evaluate a given set of name candidates and provide feedback. Therefore if you come up with a short list of names yourself, I would recommend – at a minimum – running them past a professional. After all, if you were going on a cross-country road trip, wouldn't you want to have your car inspected by a mechanic first? The same care ought to be taken with choosing a brand name before you spend years of your life working to promote a momentary toss-off decision. There are usually aspects of naming – domain selection, trademarks, online conflicts, ambiguity, sociolinguistic associations, etc. – that people who don't eat, breathe, and sleep naming tend to underestimate. Asking friends or strangers for their input can be useful, but nothing can replace the critical eye of someone who has been evaluating thousands of names daily for years.

I'm not a .COM purist. In fact I own quite a few .ME domains and have sold half a dozen of them or so. However, building a business or brand on a non-.COM extension like .ME requires some additional analysis. It's impossible to advise you on which name / domain to choose in the absence of the name itself. As for the strategy of partnering with someone else just because you want their name ... that sounds excessively complicated, prone to misunderstanding, potentially expensive, and (since you haven't even approached them) a bit pie-in-the-sky. Trademark overlaps might also invite litigation. I think you could use some professional advice. Let's schedule a call.

It's far less important than it used to be, because so many social media businesses are much more reliant on their apps than their desktop websites these days. Instagram launched (and grew fast) with the domain instagr.am, for instance.

Choosing the right domain is what I do for a living. If you'd like to schedule a call, I'll give the matter some thought ahead of time. We should be able to figure things out by phone in 15 minutes or less.

I'd argue that adding "app" to your domain name *strengthens* your brand by making it more transparent and honest. It's accepted practice; see, for example, bufferapp.com and umergencyapp.com. "Try__.com," on the other hand, is less advisable: it sounds tentative and uncertain. For other URL options--slogans, extensions, puns--see my blog post: http://nancyfriedman.typepad.com/away_with_words/2014/02/a-pure-dot-com-domain-you-dont-need-it.html