There was a time when landline numbers had to be written in a diary or etched in memory. There were no fancy mobile phones with unlimited storage memory.
You had to remember the phone number of a person if you had to chat with him/her. The phone number was the only way you could be reached. If you had an easy number, people could remember it and hence reach you when they needed you. Hence everyone wanted a number which went 12345678.
The domain name is similar to the telephone number. Most of the type in traffic needs to remember the portal name in its actual form, if they want to visit the website. If you don't know it, you won't be able to reach the portal (if you don't know the number, you can't reach the person).
Custom Save Numbers
Now you can store the number of people you would like to stay in touch with, in a format and name you choose. His phone number could be complicated but it does not affect you.
I have names of companies stored in a way I can understand and access easily. The names are typically related to a benefit I associate with them. So I need a bill register for my startup cafe, I call the person "Bill register Andy" - His company is called Total Retail Solutions but I couldn't care less.
Custom Save Websites
Websites are increasingly being stored in a customized manner using social bookmarks and feed readers, as already described in Can you succeed when your domain name suxx!!. Going forward, is there a possibility that the importance of a domain name will be reduced to inducing the first few visits. Once the visitor is convinced of the websites utility, he might just choose to save it with a name he is comfortable with.
To give you an example, I visit a page with a long and convoluted name (many /'s and .net attached to it) everyday at work to get past Websense, and I don't think it would have made a huge difference to my visiting pattern if it were called http://www.circumventor.com.
The site is just too useful, and I will visit it irrespective of what its called. All I do is type the first 2 letters and this is one of the first few sites suggested by my browser navigation bar. I have also saved it as a bookmark on my browser and on delicious as, yup you guessed right "Circumventor".
Now I am sure it would make life easier if its domain name were easy too, but the lack of it does not affect my visiting pattern as I have already custom saved it.
Can there be more changes expected?
The future for browsers could well be to introduce a feature which allows you to custom save your website in the browser navigation bar. This will allow you to type "search" and not "google" to search the web. (extreme example - but you get the point)
We might even have an online browser (like virtual desktops are in place), so that you can easily access your frequently used websites, from any location, with a name that you choose to associate with them and a navigation tool bar that allows you to brand the websites and not depend on their domain name.
Hence what your domain name is called can progressively become irrelevant to the all powerful web user. He might just choose to brand you more than you can brand yourself.
