news How-Old.net - Microsoft go with hyphenated .NET

[RU]

Hi,

Microsoft introduced How-Old.net, a website to guess how old you are.
I found it interesting why Microsoft chose .NET domain?

Best,
RU

 

[hxp]

I was literally just thinking about this as well! Howold.com is up for sale but, they didn't go for it.

Maybe the companies are getting smarter and more frugal? After paying millions for domains that were held hostage. They can put those dollars to better use promoting the domain, however crappy it is. The site also mentions that it is in demo/testing stage. Apparently, they were only expecting 50 users to test but, it ended up going viral. So that could be part of the reason why.

I personally think it looks tacky. They should dish out for the obvious version.

EDIT: Yeah, if you click the "Read the story behind this demo" link, it tells you that they are a third party (not Microsoft) that was testing the API.

 

[hxp]

My mistake, it is Microsoft, not a third party.

So, I am still dumbfounded.

 

[RU]

http://blogs.technet.com/b/machinel...-powerbi-observing-virality-in-real-time.aspx

 

[angelchen1111]

Maybe that's because they are fond of .net since they are the inventor of the .net framework

 

[RU]

Maybe you're right. I thought about this too..

 

[crunchyg]

LOL somebody bought the non-hyphenated version from Andrew Reberry last night for $3,600 and is already trying to flip it for 10K. A futile exercise if you ask me, since how-old.net was just something thrown together by Microsoft's engineers to show off their Face API and is not meant to be a commercial product.

 

[RU]

Let's see if Microsoft will use this technology for the HoloLens.

youtube.com/watch?v=Suc5B79qjfE

 

[anhnguyenict]

I think it is temp site. It also using Cloudflare DNS

 

[RU]

I think maybe they're trying to develop A.I. ?!

 

[Kate]

It's not the first MS use a .net. If I remember well their initial Zune domain was .net.

Also, they are famous for their .NET development framework.

 

[enterscope]

I think it's great for the domain industry that large companies are developing crappy domains. It boosts the value of all domains collectively when money is invested in non-premiums. Now hyphened names are worth more and so are .Nets. As a result the .com version has now increased in value.

 

[jdab]

For a company of that size, I don't think the domain is all that important. It's going to get exposure either way, and the average internet user probably wouldn't even care - it's got the endorsement from Microsoft so it doesn't matter to them.

On a side note, I tested the site out yesterday.

I'm 21.

 

[Paul]

For a company of that size, I don't think the domain is all that important. It's going to get exposure either way, and the average internet user probably wouldn't even care - it's got the endorsement from Microsoft so it doesn't matter to them.

On a side note, I tested the site out yesterday.
[...]
I'm 21.

According to the info page:

This page lets users upload a picture and have the API predict the age and gender of any faces recognized in that picture. Now, while the API is reasonably good at locating the faces and identifying gender it isn’t particularly accurate with age, but it’s often good for a laugh and users have fun with it.​

 

[HoloNames]

This is not a serious website. It's just a project to demonstate certain technologies and services.

 

[RU]

This is not a serious website.

How-old.net has
Global Rank

6,247
Rank in United States

1,360
looks like this is a serious site

 

[HoloNames]

How-old.net has
Global Rank

6,247
Rank in United States

1,360
looks like this is a serious site

No. it's not. Watch the Build part where they talk about it once again. I was watching it live. This website was ment to be for demonstration purposes only. They get many information based on your browsing history and other stuff, the photo is only a small part. He is talking about it in the video, please, watch it again. How-Old.net was created specifically for a demonstration of Azure services and how they can adjust to the number of visitors etc. Btw. their "elasticity" failed during the presentation. Watch the guy trying to process his uploaded photo ;D. Fail! And I like MSFT, but this presentation was a big Azure fail. The ranking stats are good because of every dumbass tabloid was writing about how-old.net and nobody about the cows reproduction increase thanks to Azure analyzing the number of steps taken by cows.

 

[Hybrid Names]

so i just tried this site
photo with beard = 39 year old
without beard 19 year old

 

[vicho]

Maybe they just wanna fly their own colors by acting differently...
No way will hyphenated ones become the mainstream.

 

[Rado_Ch]

so i just tried this site
photo with beard = 39 year old
without beard 19 year old

Lucky you - I got 39yo without the beard (I am 28 and without the beard I look at least 5 years younger) :D

 

[Rado_Ch]

Boy what a letdown...tried with the ABSOLUTE SAME photo, just reduced its size and removed background (changed from blue sky to just gray color) - now it appears that I am 27yo.

 

[Dean Taylor]

.net was the original name on the internet and is still a TLD - it just proves that things are changing and in my opinion .net and .org will catch the .com in value as availability of the .com is decreasing rapidly

 

[ramkumaritrvs]

My phone camera is better than this website.

My phone is 90% to 95% accurate but this website is far away. i thought it was only for me but most of them got same like me

They should improve their API / algorithm.

 

[RU]

Try this http://what-name.net/ :D

 

[alien51]

Well, this is a demonstration that CONTENT IS KING.

If you build it, they will come.... no matter how crappy your domain is.

It's just like pornography or warez sites. The name itself doesn't matter. As long as people are getting the goods they want, they will BOOKMARK the site and just put a more interesting LABEL next to the bookmark to help them identify the domain.

Now "Branding"..... that's a whole different playing field. If you start dealing with "me too's" and copycats, the branding effect will start kicking in.