At my office, during some point in 2004 someone got tired of referring to the company web domain as (in phonetics): double-u, double-u, double-u, dot, digital look dot com. So, he slurred the longest part in to 'dub-dub-dub'.
The result was a team of professional developers speaking to clients about our web site like we're half cut!
WWW or the World Wide Web. It's got it's use, but why do we still attach it to the front of our web addresses?
There was a point in the past where the web was new to everyone, and more importantly, there were other online services just as common as HTTP.
So, if someone was saying to have a look at their web page, probably just a bulletin at the time, the WWW part would tell us that it was served over HTTP.
Times are a changin'. In fact, times have changed. If you hear 'visit bbc dot co dot uk, slash radio one - you know that means http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio1.
This begs the question: why did you add the 'www'? What does it mean?
It means it's a web page on the Internet. Well, you knew that already didn't you?
You don't send emails to coxy@mail.bbc.co.uk because it's an email - your email program does the math for you. For those non-techs - your email is sending through a protocol called SMTP - which knows the email needs to go to an email server.
So, why did you add the 'www'? You don't need to*.
What's worse is that 'WWW', to say out loud, is 9 syllables long! 'World Wide Web' is only 3 - so actually it's backward to abbreviate let alone add it to all the web site addresses we visit.
Interested? Join in with the revolution.
* I say you don't need to - perhaps you should take this with a little pinch of salt. I know of a few web sites that act differently if you drop the leading 'www', but this is something we can campaign for together can't we?