As many of you have noticed by now, I’ve switched from fusionfox.com to clifton.im. I chose clifton.im because most “clifton” domains are taken (by squatters, no less), and I like the “I am” sound it has. I thought I’d take a second to describe the decision process to move from a long-time .com to a new .im.

The fundamental reason for my switch is that I want my freelance business to be closely associated with my name. In the freelance design market, my experience has been that if you’re a one-man shop, you should try and look like one. Trying to fake that you’re a big firm, or even a small one, is a deterrent for most businesses shopping around for a designer. A business can usually get a better deal working with one guy instead of a firm with inflated pricing structures and lots of overhead.

FusionFox has always sounded cool and fast, but it has been a huge pain to brand over the years. I have spent days trying to come up with logos, and few things ever felt right. I also had a client mention that when talking about me and my business, the mention of “FusionFox” introduced confusion since it sounds similar to “Firefox.” So in the end, I wanted to be Clifton Labrum Design, and have a short, easy-to-remember domain name. I have registered a new LLC and am open for business. FusionFox will be no longer. I’ll keep the fusionfox.com domain for a while to make the transition smooth (it’s currently a 301 redirect to here).

There are lots of opinions out there on the superiority of .com/.net/.org and there’s no doubt that .com’s are the most valuable domains around. But have you noticed what’s happening with businesses these days? They have to come up with domains that are either really, really long, or somewhat complex in order to get an available .com. In my opinion, the domain extension is becoming less and less important in favor of either having a shorter domain (e.g. j.mp, bit.ly, tr.im, etc.) or a more personalized or understandable one (e.g. clifton.im). I don’t think the Internet community has winced one bit when it comes to international domains. URL shorteners are wildly popular now (thanks to Twitter) and I think those funky new domains show that having a .com is pretty irrelevant in a world where most URLs get clicked, not typed. I, for one, would much rather type greatcomputers.im than greatandaffordablecomputersystemsllc.com.

Having clifton.im is really easy to say, and hopefully easier to remember than FusionFox. I also bought clif.im and set up my own URL shortener. I’ve been pretty pleased to have both to establish and reinforce my online identity.

So welcome to clifton.im—home of my freelance web design shop. Don’t forget to grab the new RSS feed.