DOTS TO DOLLARS; SOME SEE COOL CACHE, CASH WITH `.COM'.

Byline: Scott Lanman Bloomberg News

What a difference a period and three letters make.

Just ask Egghead.com. The former Egghead Inc. added the trendy suffix earlier this year when it unveiled plans to shut its stores and move its software business to the Internet. Its shares tripled since the changes amid increased revenue from its Web site and optimism that sales will climb further.

Others are cashing in on the suddenly hip designation for a commercial venture on the Internet, an abbreviation that for years had all the cachet of a pocket protector. Shares of Broadcast.com Inc., which changed its name from AudioNet Inc., more than quadrupled in its first day of trading as investors clamored for the company that delivers audio and video on the Web.

``It's a way to show you're on a cutting edge,'' said David Burd, president of Naming Co., an East Stroudsburg, Pa., creator of names for businesses and products, whose clients include Walt Disney Co. and Microsoft Corp.

Although it's difficult to gauge whether having a dot-com in a name produces any welcome side effects such as extra revenue or profit, a couple things are sure: Companies stand out from the pack, and no one will have a problem finding their sites on the World Wide Web.

Internet Liquidators International Inc. of Toronto changed its name in July to Bid.com International Inc. to reflect the growth of its Web site of the same name. The site lets people bid on computers, stereos, cameras and other items online.

The suffix ``obviously differentiates you from other players that might not be tied to the Internet,'' said Patrick Keane, an analyst at market researcher Jupiter Communications. ``It's ultimately going to be an easier way for people to find you.''

The granddaddy of all dot-com companies is Amazon.com Inc., the online retailer of books and music whose market value just trails the combined value of the two biggest U.S. book-selling chains, Barnes & Noble Inc. and Borders Group Inc. Amazon.com's stock price has jumped more than sixfold since it went public in May 1997 at $18 a share.

Dot-com - the most-popular suffix, or ``top-level domain,'' in Internet parlance - generally identifies the site as belonging to a commercial business, compared with other endings such as ``.edu'' for educational institutions and ``.org'' for nonprofit organizations.

Most companies of all sizes these days have Internet addresses with dot-com - disney.com and microsoft.com, for example. Incorporating the suffix into a company's name, however, takes things a step further.

Egghead.com's name change probably put a little bit more oomph behind the announcement that the Liberty Lake, Wash., company would focus only on Internet sales, said Melissa Bane, an analyst at the Yankee Group in Boston.

Don't expect non-Internet companies to bite, though.

Take American Standard Cos. Although the maker of products ranging from air conditioners to toilets to braking systems has a Web site at americanstandard.com, the Piscataway, N.J., company has ``no plans to change our company name along those lines,'' said spokeswoman Lisa Glover.

That might be just as well.

As more companies jump on the bandwagon, having such a suffix could make a business look as dated as a rotary phone, experts warn.

``It's going to look awfully foolish five years from now,'' said Burd of Naming Co. His prediction: Amazon.com will someday kill the suffix that helped get attention in the first place.