How Important is Branding?

Digital media has undeniably changed branding strategy for existing and emerging corporations. URL availability is a primary determinant when choosing a name, but associative naming is still important, and naturally at odds with URL availability. This has led to a new wave of word invention, nonsensical combinations and creative spellings. I have two questions about this new wave:
1.) Is it sustainable?
The limited set of URLS available make this unsustainable. The limiting factor is the availability of URLs and the huge number of squatters sitting on or bidding up valuable URL properties. A new naming schema is going to be necessary but the main obstacle has been normalizing a .com alternative. Alternative top-level domains have not been widely embraced, and a .com address is still regarded as a requirement for a successful brand.

2.) How important is the associative power of the brand name?
This is a much more fluid question, especially as the nature of products in the digital space don’t always line up with previously established industries. I would even go so far as to generalize that the names do not have to be related to core of the service. For example, Google, a creative misspelling of Googol, is entirely unrelated to the search functionality at the core of its business. Twitter, likewise has a name that has nothing to do with its core service. Another question is spelling; here I believe that the phonetics of the naming is the more important factor. As illustrated in class by the blueberries versus blueberrys finding, accuracy is not the determining factor in choosing a good name. Another factor that we discussed in class was the meta tagging of a site could be a more important tool for discovery and visiting, because it is even possible that more people use search to enter sites rather than using conventional URLs.