I would say word1word2.net When someone mentions the domain to family members and friends, the - will make it difficult.
it depends on your goals. If you are trying to build a brand than go without the hyphens. If you dont care about the brand and only concerned with SE traffic than maybe the hyphen is ok.
I would say the one with out the - in as it seems that search engines prefare sites without - but maybe its just an age thing.
I am agress with Bilz. If you want to build brand then go for without hyphens, If you are going to target only search engine traffic then go with hyphens or .net / .org anyone is fine.
.com for me - what's with all these .nets? Also ched: do you have any research to back up the claim that search engines don't like hyphens? I'd be interested to read it.
The second one would be easier to remember, but you might want to use the first one as well, for SEO purposes.
Bingo. Grab all of them (have them all point to the same website) and then test market by giving out different ones to different players. See which one works best in the real world. Everything else is just unsubstantiated opinion.
If you want a site that will be marketed through word of mouth, make the domain brand able, not word1-word2 or word1word2. Just madeupword.com For SEO purposes, go with word1-word2.com. .Com > all other extensions. Some people dont even know about .net and other extensions.
Only info I have is that I have 2 sites with - in the name between words and even thought they have more backlinks, more content with a higher keyword density, etc that a couple of other sites without the - but my sites are still way lower in the SERPs. It could also be an age thing as my sites are only 6 months old where as the others are at least 18 months old. So no definitive answer really just my recent experiences. I am open to other peoples experiences????
How about buying both .com and .net ? (if available) always do this once you can because domains go in no time