These are fun but regular people have so much difficulty with them.

I once snagged a 4 letter .net address that was the last 3 letters of my first name with the first initial of my last name as the last character.

I thought I was so clever. I had the shortest email address you could ever imagine and it was basically just my first name and last initial. Amazing!

Nobody got it. It was confusing. I got blank stares and confused looks. People basically refused to email me at my new address.

Sometimes long is better, and sometimes unique and easy to spell is better, too.

Examples like Pinterest or Expedia are good demonstrators. They are easy to spell when you hear the word, and they were unique words that at the time were obviously going be available. Sure, Expedia is a very old domain, but if the company didn’t exist today I’d almost guarantee you a new company looking to buy the domain would be able to find it in 2026.

Ya, I have an .st domain with is <my-first-name>@<first-three-letters-of-last-name>.st and I've had a few people have a lot of trouble with it. With one, it took about 6 or 7 tries to explain it to him before I just took over and typed it for him. Most people do get it, though, and sometimes think it's neat.

i have a 3-letter .onl domain that is the first 3 letters of my last name

I have actually needed to use it, because my cell provider (Visible) has absolutely moronic form validation that doesn't recognize a hyphen as a valid character in an email address, even though it very much is. (My main .net domain has a hyphen in it)

Very true, I found a similar issue with vanity/hack domains too. Picked up https://jo.hn a couple of years ago and the confusion it causes isn't really worth the cool-factor most of the time!

They tend to really just be suitable as a supplementary domain for short links and the like (youtu.be, goo.gl, etc.)