@dansup I think, subdomains in social networks are even more unusual than it already is, the one social network has several domains 😄

@dansup first one is better for SEO

@dansup your dns queries will go through the roof, not sure if that's a good idea

@dansup I like both

@dansup not sure subdomains would be a good idea. There are plenty of possible usernames that could clash or make it very confusing or possibly even open up alleys for malicious actors, like www, media, downloads, web, app etc. It's not something I would roll out without a proper risk-assessment.

@dansup I much prefer the former as well, but if you decided to implement the latter, I'd suggest that usernames are a fourth level domain, rather than third level, in case instance hosts want to use third level domains for separate services/sites.

@dansup there may be a bit of user confusion with the latter. Considering the format of providing your handle (@<username>@<domain>) is essentially one character difference. Fediverse is bad enough for onboarding that little things here may exacerbate the problem when discussing it with novice users.

I will also second what other comments are alluding to around how there other confusion and conflicts with how people typically use subdomain (e.g., www, CMS, etc).