Morning Folks!!
Can the New gTLD's Have a Domino Collapse? That is a very provocative question but does not delegitimize me asking it? At what point does the weight of other extensions that have not done well weigh so much on what is coming that the entire thing collapses like 1000 dominos lined up. When you add the weight of dozens of .mobi's and .travels. When you add the weight of all the gTLD's that have already been canceled. When you add the weight that even a GREAT gTLD could be tainted by the loss of the others.
Does it matter if .mobi has 1,000,000 domain registrations? Does that make it a better investment or is it still a loser as it stands today? Who cares if they make money at the registry level? They are no factor in domain investing or even domain flipping. It has NOTHING to do with YOUR LIFE!
And I don't mean to pick on .mobi but that is without doubt the clearest example so far. With great fanfare. They had their moment in the sun.They make $$$ with the sunrise and all, but face it, domain investors got caught holding the bag. And that is ok. That is what speculation is about. But other extensions DO have a more active aftermarket. .TV, .INFO, .ME. So there are lessons to be learned.
So in the event that the first 100 new extensions came to market and fell flat, what exactly would that spell for the other 900? It does not help their efforts it hinders their efforts. Even a winner could be weighed down by the sinking of others. And some are gonna sink right to the bottom.
So in that event, I would think some would be forced to even further delay a new extension rollout as they could go down with the tide. Let me be clear, I am not saying this will happen. But I do see it as ONE of the possibilities. Who goes FIRST could play a huge part in how this all unfolds. What if the first 5 rollouts are DOGS?
Food for thought. Never discount things that are possible until that threshold has been passed. .Mobi did not make the cut. Tebow did not make the cut. Both were surrounded by excitement and all the rest. But at the end of the day, the road has yet to lead either where they "Intended" to go. Tebow is still alive, .mobi is not alive as a domain investor extension today. So who cares how many are registered. They are not being used commercially and that is the KEY to value. No billboards, no TV, No Radio, no ADVERTISING DOLLARS at the end-user level. That's the KEY to growth. Not a bunch if domain investors buying TULIPS! If you don't know the Tulip Story, go LEARN IT right now!! RIGHT NOW. I sure have talked about it enough over the years. THAT is the most likely scenario at best.
Need, want desire. If nobody needs, wants or desires an extension and the few they sell are to investors looking for the 2nd coming and few if any are used commercially in advertising, how exactly does it get the oxygen to survive? Especially for investors. In OUR LIFETIME!?
.Com took off for a reason. The value of .com took off for a reason. How much did end users spend promoting .mobi last year?? THAT is where the value STARTS!
Reasons are missing in this new equation. They are just missing. And when you try to copy a recipe and the main ingredients are missing, what exactly do you have?
990 or more extensions could be very disappointed with their results regardless of their aspiring intentions. Some may not matter because with many new gTLD's then collectively they can operate and make money. But that is a different business than we are in.
.com did not happen overnight even with millions of registrations and many advertising the extension and little competition. A success on a new gTLD could take 10-20 years or more to manifest itself. Some folks think they can't plant a seed in the morning and have a tree in the evening. Maybe. 3 real or FAKE stories like that and the sheep will come a running.
But not to consider these things? Come on! This is MORE than possible given the evidence we already have. So those who have not thought about this scenario.....are they REALLY prepared? My question being in sales and marketing for so long is why would you not EXPECT it to happen? So if you don't expect something that is a possibility and that possibility arises and you are caught SURPRISED.......what happens then?
Rick Schwartz
Jay
god I hope so. thanks for the post Rick.
Dave Wrixon
There is nothing of commercial value in all this lot except the Dot Com Transliterations whose rights are already up for grabs, other than perhaps a few Chinese IDNs that will succeed due to the huge size of the market. Total E-commerce in China is poised to overtake Japan and then it only a matter of years before it overhauls the US market. So if there is room for more than a couple of extensions in the US then, that is also going to be true of China, and perhaps later India and Russia.
Duane Higgins
Good post on .com kingdom here that I wrote last night:
http://www.newmarketnames.com
ps. Rick, thank you for letting me post this. (if it makes the cut)
M Altaf Hossain
Thank you Rick for the brain storming post. However, iMO a huge influx of capital is bound to play in the market that will eventually make huge folks aware of the domains. It all depends upon the end user or market players . If trading with other any . Whatever starts with flipping the hands you never know which way the trend goes. But sure it will take reasonable amount of time, energy and involvement of the riches
DrDomainer
(When you try to copy a recipe and the main ingredients are missing, what exactly do you have?) Perfect way to describe them.
JBS gTLDs = fools gold! Perfect way to describe them.
Bruce Lee Quote “Showing off is the fool’s idea of glory.”
gTLDs is going to bring out the domaining fools and the test of time will prove it.
The way I look at some of the top gTLDs is its like leasing real estate and the .com is the capital city and owns the land and gTLDs owners will build on the land and some will be very successful but at the end of the day the .com owner has full control.
Privy Domains
Hey Rick,
Nice Analogy with Tulip Bubble
For those who didn’t know about Tulip Mania, it happened in 1600’s and within 6-9 months the cost of a Tulip Flower went from Zilch to such levels that one tulip cost was equal to a house.
Howver it burst up with similar speed and lead to many disasters in economy
Read more http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tulip_mania
Privy Domains
I also think that so many extensions can cause harm to other existing extension which are somewhat growing like .co, and .me, even from existing levels becuse there would be so much confusion in the public.
However i sincerely hope that this does not happen to .me & .co as i am significantly invested in them also
Domenclature.com
Coming to think of it, what kind of organization will determine to release over 1900 arbitrary gTLDs to the public at the same time, and plan to roll out even more in due course? The same outfit that has released less than 100 in the last 25 years. It makes absolutely no sense, unless you follow the money of course.
shanecultra
I guarantee I am the only domain investor here that made a bunch of money selling tulips this year.
SA
Just like bringing in fresh blood and ideas to T.R.A.F.F.I.C. let’s hope that fresh blood (many registries with no past domain investment affiliation) also bring new blood and new ideas. To be honest failure of any new extensions is a strong blemish on the industry that we invest in even if it is dotcoms that we hold. We are not talking about yesterdays successes here but rather today and tomorrows interest in the Internet in general and how businesses value Domain names as a business asset thus their willingness to pay. Sure, there have been some notable sales but when you look at the numbers (which as you say, Don’t lie) you must admit that the number of dotcom sales this year is minute at best when compared to the total float of names in the market.
I believe that investors should be watching GTLD activity with a very keen eye to see well beyond sales numbers and look at market adoption and interest.
If dotcom sales rise due to renewed marketing of domain names (whatever extension) that’s good for us but if neither new GTLD extension sales happen or dotcom sales increase due to the increased domain name marketing efforts of new registries then “Houston … we have a problem” for sure.
Dave W “There is nothing of commercial value in all this lot except the Dot Com”
interesting you should use the word value. As Rick said, the buyer sets the price the seller sets the value. Unfortunately why you, I and other domainers do set value based on historical sales or perhaps our Internet business experience or industry knowledge the price is set buy the buyer. And if nobody is buying the price is ZERO.
It is fun to speculate on what might happen but the only ones that matter won’t be weighing in here. That is the buyers and they will be weighing in personally with their wallets and not their words.
Gordon
Rick in a suit and tie…..I just about fell off my chair! :-)
I couldn’t agree more. Once you get these yahoos promoting their little extensions you have to wonder how do hundred of new entrants get market attention. Info tried it by going cheap and the spammers lined up to the point Google banned the extension so if you can’t sell it cheap……then what?
Rick Schwartz
Gordon,
18 years of spring training for a season that just happens to start tomorrow. A season that will out-live everyone of us that is reading this today.
JBS
If the catalyst for a possible domino collapse is a lack of widespread adoption, than the odds are greater than you think! Don’t forget:
1. The novelty of most new extensions is the keyword to the right of the dot.
2. Having the keyword to the right of the dot limits good phrases to only a dozen or so for many extensions.
3. After those few good combinations are taken – pigeon sh*t…
4. The geos are limiting (geographically LOL) – The generics have existing competition.
5. Result = clusterf*ck
Rick Schwartz
2. Having the keyword to the right of the dot limits good phrases to only a dozen or so for many extensions.
3. After those few good combinations are taken – pigeon sh*t…
BINGO!!!!!
1995
I have thought about this Domino notion already for some time.
What I concluded is that if there are several high profile flops, and you are a person or company with say a couple million to invest, do you want to chance it on a new extension that may also flop? Sounds scary to me.
Or, would you prefer to spend 500K on a great .com domain which you know is not going to see a registry flop?
If there are flops right out of the gate the rest of the TLDs will most likely see the same fate.
BillW
This is a different game than registries with 0 customers starting from the ground up. These ‘new’ gTLD applicants already have MILLIONS of customers and HUNDREDS OF MILLIONS of annual visitors of existing internet traffic, not to mention massive war chests of money to throw at the projects they wish.
Amazon, Apple, Google and Yahoo are going to be the most formidable players in the new gTLD space in ways most can not imagine….because they just need to market there “new” ideas to their existing massive audiences.
These are some of the big players, that already have the big traffic to market to: Amazon, Apple, Google. GoDaddy, Microsoft, Starbucks, VeriSign, Wal-Mart, Yahoo
Bill W
continuing my post above……..Amazon, Apple, Google. Microsoft, Wal-Mart, and Yahoo don’t have to start anywhere near ground 0 to market their new gTLD. They just have to put an advertisement out to their EXISTING INTERNET TRAFFIC with an discount, coupon etc….and put a ‘hot’ LINK for customers to simply CLICK ON and voila- they land on their ‘new’ gTLD. Customers may not even notice where they landed, they just want the free discount coupon etc.
The big 4 Google, Yahoo, Apple, and Microsoft…..I predict they will someday give you a FREE domain name AND a FREE WEBSITE….and then make big money off “your” traffic with their advertising and services, or off you using thier respective search engines. DOT .com is KING….but these guys are the TRAFFIC KINGS and they are going to figure out how to make money in they new gTLD game at anyone’s and everyone’s expense.. For all the new gTLD wannabe;s that don’t ‘own’ traffic like Google, Amazon, Yahoo etc. its gonna be a long hard road.
Dean
I equate owning the .Com of any name or product, similar to owning the trademark or copyright. Once that .Com is registered, unless already trademarked than you own it and by extension (pun intended) the rights to that name or brand.. Secondary extensions, will have a hard time staking their claim to names already registered in the .Com extension without stepping on toes. I think the writing is on the wall and lawyers are going to have a field day once these new extensions are released.
Domenclature.com
BillW
September 2nd, 2013
”
Amazon, Apple, Google and Yahoo are going to be the most formidable players in the new gTLD space in ways most can not imagine….because they just need to market there “new” ideas to their existing massive audiences”.
@BillW
The fact that Google, and Twitter registered and use .co did not have the effect you portray for those extensions; I wonder if that affects your thinking.
Frank Schilling
They did not promote the .co in a sustained way as if they were serving clients from it though. Apples and Oranges.
Privy Domains
Let the dices Roll. In Casino, the house always wins. All else loses.
Registries will make money through the gambling spirit of registrants.
UFO
These extensions are dire for domain ‘investing’. Simply because registries know whats value and whats not. So you’ll be able to buy pigeon sh*t at cost or pay good money for better stuff. Its like IPOs.
The extensions that will work, will do so because they are not available for domainers to buy stakes in, they will actually have some use to end users who will adopt and add value to. Amazon with .shop and .store may well be a very interesting business model if they do what I have discussed in the past.
Domain investors buying up URLs are actually the kiss of death to adoption. .Web could die simply because domainers try to squeeze too much value. Its a bit like the ‘grazing the common’s’ scenario of economics. Individual pursuit, collective failure.
Anyway, just buy decent com’s and if you really know your sh*t, then domains that relate to places like China, Russia and Brazil because the’re bubbling away thats for sure.
Frank Schilling
>>.Com took off for a reason. The value of .com the took off for a reason.
Rick – you’re right. When I started on the web all the content was on .int, .edu, .mil, .gov and the .CCtld of the Country you’re in.. It wasn’t till McDonalds took BigMac.com and put up a picture of the Big Mac (their McDonalds.com was registered by the briliant Josh Quittner if I recall) that other brands started to follow. Pretty soon lots of big companies said “Hey – we gotta put up our stuff at the .com”. As the BIG brands started to promote their stuff at the .com the small brands with no market cap but with big dreams of one day charting on the Fortune 500 ran out and got their .coms so they could look and feel like the big dogs. That same penis-envy is going to play out today. First the big brands will step in, then the brands that missed the boat will join, then the next 500 that wanna look big and so on. As more consumers see 57.heinz and 325i.BMW and emporio.armani in the wild, on tv, Billboards, etc, others will follow suit (pardon the pun) and consumers will get more comfortable with this. The difference between this round and others is that there are LOTS of good extensions coming out together and that is a disruptive game changer.
Will .com go away overnight? No. Will it take 10 years for this to play out? Maybe longer.. But I’m fairly certain we’ll both live to see the day that .com is marginalized as AM radio was maginalized with the advent of FM, Satellite and Internet Radio. You will still need a good .com, and .com values will likely rise, but they will not rise as quickly as they could have if there was no such thing as new-gtlds, and in some years we could see prices come down. Also the pigeon shit and average coms will eventually get worth less and go away and that will make the collective com space a bit weaker IMO.
JBS
“First the big brands will step in, then the brands that missed the boat will join, then the next 500 that wanna look big and so on.”
It looks like Amazon.com will forever be Amazon.com and never .amazon. That might be a pretty big blow to that scenario playing out…
Frank Schilling
Yes – but they will likely get .AMZN and start branding “AMZN Delivers” and that marketing force will change the way we thin about Amazon. Fedex used to be called “Federal Express” and KFC was “Kentucky Fried Chicken” .. they will slowly rebrand to shape reality. Not everything will fit.. and not every brand will have it’s own G right away. This will play out over a long period of time. The important thing to remember though is that the brands lead the marketing.. Not the other way around.
DrDomainer
Frank – I agree about all the average coms will be worthless in the future. The reason I’m so confident gTLDs are not going to harm .coms is search engines!!
DrDomainer
London.hotels Lawyer.nyc etc They would never promote them because users would stop using searchengines.
Frank Schilling
Search engines follow the audience, they don’t lead. They are a reflection of what is happening. If everybody and their uncle built sites in .hotels and .lawyer and people visited those sites and blogged about them and linked to them then those namespaces would become more relevant in search engines. It’s a chicken egg thing.
JBS
As domain investors, we are looking for hopefully coveted domains in potentially popular extensions. Since we can’t invest in .pepsi or .bmw, that leaves the non-brand gTLDs. Besides the geos and generics (with other limitations), can anyone name just one specific keyword extension coming that has even 100 investment quality domains? If not, are the rest of the domains in those extensions actually worse than average .coms. Will the general population get excited from all the hoopla and rush to register the domain of their dreams, only to find out the 15 or 20 good ones from that extension are gone already? What happens next?
JBS
I honestly would love to believe in the new extensions. I am always looking for opportunity and would love to invest. I am just trying to see the value in specific new domains / extensions and not just the “new gTLDs” in general.- you know, where the rubber meets the road. It would be great to hear a compelling and persuasive pitch for even one specific keyword extension. Why focus on a “keyword” extension? Because the “keyword” gTLDs are where the excitement is – without them, this whole expansion is boring news. But when people find that the available domain phrases for keyword domains (after a day or two) actually suck, will they still be excited about all the new “choices”…? What will all the blog / word of mouth / viral messages be afterwards?
Kassey
Thanks to Frank Schilling for this healthy debate on the value of new gTLDs. I have learned to keep an open mind, because life is full of surprises.
Lyn
Generic businesses will us ,com. Conglomerates will go after their name…not even giving up the .com. Surprised the predecessor .co wasn’t used first. I had high expectations for that beeing the next best thing to the .com easy to remember short…Lets not forget Overstock branding themselves to.co. Went back to .com. To much confusion with all new codes, People will continue to flock to com as first choice.
Rick Schwartz
Frank,
I really don’t credit BigMac.com. First time I ever heard of the domain name was now. My credit goes to CNN.COM as they were the first ones to drill it into my head day after day and every few minutes for years before I was online everyday.
My whole point is it won’t be up to us. The consumer and the end user will decide the fate of each extension.
As for AM radio, remember FM offered Stereo and AM did not. So there was a difference in content and technology. I don’t see those 2 elements present here. What new technology will these new extensions offer?
Rick Schwartz
I agree it will come to relevancy and I doubt the extension will make a difference as far as Google.
drdomainer
Frank
That’s great news for .com owners if search engines always follow the audience because all these gTLDs are going to give premium .coms to a very large audience from leaked traffic and that will help boost their rankings. Google don’t care about changing their marketing format they have done it so many times in the past. Once they see every year huge amounts of people are starting to type in the URL they will do new updates and deindex these types of urls because they don’t want them getting into the habit.
Would you ever start a new business without owning the .com?
It’s definitely going to change the market and you are going to do very well from it whatever happens.One thing we hopefully agree on is we are going to witness the domain industry change in these next few years FOREVER.
Frank Schilling
CNN will keep using their .COM and maybe they will take CNN.NEWS, as a different way to label some content online.. but one day they’ll have .CNN and you’ll visit US.CNN, HEADLINES.CNN etc. Brands are proud of their name and like few things better than saying it. The consumer will decide to visit what they are told to visit on TV, in print, on the Radio. If the brands decide to market their .BRAND extension over their .com then that is where the people will go. The Stereo comes in 2 forms.. First you get to drop the .COM (4 unnecessary letters) and secondly you get brand-authority.. There are no typosquatters to the right of the dot except error search which will ultimately get you back to the brand via Google.
Rick Schwartz
Frank,
You better tell the world the blueprint they must use because I still see the Main Entrance as the .com no matter what happens that may or may not expand things. And dropping the .com may end up being a status symbol for some. It’s just intuitive and matter of fact at this point. That’s one hell of a good position to be in. Splintering their traffic may end up costly. Splintering or adding to their workforce may be equally be as costly and then we still have a result that is unknown regardless of how any of us think it will unfold.
See, the place we differ is you think the consumer gets dictated to and I believe it is the opposite. The consumer dictates. That is what happened with Overstock.com and O.co. Who dictated to who?
Frank Schilling
The generic opportunity is still there it’s just changing. Ford will market trucks.ford or f150.ford and there will be traffic to names like pickup.trucks and used.cars. Yes there will only be a few good generic SLDs in each GTLD but the registries will not need 100 million registrations to be profitable. All this will take a long time to play out, so those of you who rightly notice that .com is still king in 5 years time are right, but in the very long run there will be all sorts of competition and over time dilution from the Billions of people/businesses who do not yet own a name. Those folk will see new G’s as a pretty good alternative to .com and start using them. Most people today publish their content online at WordPress, twitter, FB etc. In the future they will have easy to remember names from Amazon, Google, Uniregistry, etc. It’s a change and it will happen slooooowly from our perspective. People laughed at me when I reg’d sumowrestlers.com in ’01 – people will laugh when u reg outdoor.gardening in 2014 but in the long run – u will be laughing.
Rick Schwartz
Frank,
I thank you for coming here and having this discussion. This debate.
We all want to see what you see and see if it applies to us as domainers.
See if and when and how it may play out.
CNN.com no longer uses iReport.com. It now goes to http://ireport.cnn.com. Seems like training folks like that is more cost effective and less confusing and it can be applied equally and universally. My mind keeps taking me back to Ben Franklin and the Library. Imagine if the library were set up as a commercial effort. I don’t think it would work as well if at all. Then you would have a “Book store” and not a library. So there is a fundamental pitfall that I see.
JBS
“people will laugh when u reg outdoor.gardening in 2014 but in the long run – u will be laughing.”
Actually, that is one of the handful of good .gardening domain combinations. They may laugh at hoes.gardening though…
Rick Schwartz
Another example of who dictates what to who or whom. Look at JC Penny. They keep reinventing themselves because the consumer keeps rejecting their changes. They may reinvent themselves right out of business. So I say the consumer is in control. He dictates, everyone else jumps trying to satisfy them.
So I think you did a great job in describing what they want to achieve but then again each company has their own agenda or are buying the brand just to store in a vault just in case. So there may be diverse opinions.
Maybe just brand protection for some and defensive for others. Cheaper to buy the gTLD than trying to put out a million fires with all the legal fees.
1995
Frank, remember how Google killed of directories around 2005? They have a real vested interest to control the direction of search, just like they have demonstrated with Chrome, scrubbing parked pages from the index, etc…
IMO, the last thing they want to do is strengthen direct navigation to any domains.
I think they will just give the new extensions just a tad less weight, which will hurt, but won’t turn off the surfer enough to leave Google to search elsewhere.
1995
Too much confusion. If what you say is true an app will be needed to remember all the domains.
There are no typosquatters to the right of the dot, but there sure will be to the left. This is going to be a whole new field opening up to typosquatting.
Like the Love.me domain, which Rick sold, even though that’s not a new extension, if LoveMe.com is free it will be snapped up and will reap the rewards.
JBS
“Yes there will only be a few good generic SLDs in each GTLD but the registries will not need 100 million registrations to be profitable.”
That is a very truthful admission from F.S. It is very much appreciated but far from a persuasive argument for investing in the new gTLDs…
Domenclature.com
@Schilling,
There are many constants, and very few variables when it comes to the internet. We must try to identify, and label them. We now understand the internet better than we did when .COM was launched. By we, I mean human beings. Consequently, that shifts things that were variables into the constant column.
I will be addressing this in more detail as this debate heats up.
One constant is that a majority of Businesses, as well as individuals, are not internet enthusiasts. They do not think it’s fun to register names, and build websites on them; or to maintain them. For that reason, you will not have too many businesses, or individuals, wanting to go through the experience of registering, developing, or promoting their online presence, unless they have to; and they don’t have to with the introduction of these new gTLDs. This is a huge chunk! It could be 95% or more of active domain names/businesses.
But there will be some enthusiasts, people who like novelty. There will be brand authority people as well. Of course we must clarify the difference between open new GTLD strings, and closed ones. So of your points, including the penis-envy, may apply to closed strings. So,we must avoid using those two categories interchangeably.
DonnyM
I don’t drink pbr and laugh at the hipsters that go along with it. Sometimes that is the way things start and get popular. What is concerning is that what if they start giving away pbr? (domains)
This will crush the other extensions or hurt them. They will have all the attention.
BIG G has all the marketing dollars in the world to give away domain names. They have given away email, storage and tons of other things this will be just another add on. BUT BIG-G will make money on the back end, ad-words, banners, extra cloud storage. So give away the name and get it all back later. This is going to happen because it is what they do and have done in the past.
Will BIG-G buy out Godaddy?, Whoever gives away all the services for FREE will have a better chance to survive. BIG-G has it all. For most Gtld- It is game-over.
Gordon
Amazon with .shop and .store may well be a very interesting business model if they do what I have discussed in the past.
Think of AOL with all that captive traffic and we all know where that ended. and that’s exactly where I think efforts like that will end up. People may use them initially but in the long run will revert to past behavior.
Gordon
Above comment with .shop and .store was supposed to be in quotes.
“Amazon with .shop and .store may well be a very interesting business model if they do what I have discussed in the past.”
Frank Schilling
Yes – this is going to be a huge and profound change for sure.. This isn’t just one string – it’s thousands of strings and tens of thousands that will follow in subsequent rounds. Neat to participate in. The .com will always have relevance but that relevance will change as more new g’s come online in the next 10-15 years.
Frank Schilling
Your ireport redirect to cnn is a good example Rick. Dealbook.com redirects to the nytimes.com too. Don’t think for a minute they would not drop the com if they had .nytimes or .cnn The coms will point to the new g’s until users know where to find the content. Google too will “help” users in Chrome .. and that will embolden them to further shape user experience. The risk for G is overstepping and doing evil or thwarting their users wishes and denigrating their product. There are going to be all kinds of innovations and marketing.
The most important take-away is that growth will mainly come from those who do not today own a name. The majority of people on this planet do not own a name and many would like to. New namespaces and innovative ways to put up content and publish sites, tied with more availability and marketing mean that millions of people who would have not had a name will now get one. Of course we are all free to become those future registrants too.
DrDomainer
I wonder whats going to happen to domains when people start getting used
to browsing with gestures and other alternatives?
Iron man (Hand Gesture Interface + Holotable)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=6ECVHsUVuJg#t=19
SpaceGlasses.com
Mason
I think Frank Schilling has it all backwards. Namely, Frank is looking at the “Advertiser” side of the equation when he should be looking at the behavior of the “User” side of the equation. Circulation drives magazine publications, NOT the advertising. Dog wags tail. Not the other way around.
Frank suggests that BIG COMPANIES will shape the direction of the Internet when in fact what makes the Interwebz of value to most USERS is that a person searching on the Interwebz can equally locate a big company or a small company and then assess which has better content. I dont think a user is going to care if they get the ADVERTSING from .pepsi or pepsi.com. In fact, the user may actually PREFER the public space that is represented by .COM
Even if I’m wrong…which I admit that I may be… the risk/reward into purchasing a VANITY LICENSE PLATE via a GTLD seems very high for an UNPROVEN business model. It looks like dumb money to me. But what do I know.
UFO
I think a point that Frank misses is that while Big Brands like a bit of variety they don’t do it in too larger doses. They WANT consumers to remember 1 brand, and they will ram that into your mind as often as possible.
AMZN.delivers, fine if they own trademarks in the various nations they intend to use that expression in for the appropriate class. But all these tag lines (because thats what they are) will invariably confuse consumers, especially if they are supposed to be a URL.
Believe it or not Amazon’s key differentiator is that are VERY GOOD at logistics and price. The CEO at Amazon won’t give a flying ^%&& about the silly marketing people trying to use URLs, it IS NOT what drives their business model.
These new TLDs bring NOTHING to the table other than the opportunity to engage in some novel marketing which won’t be the differentiator to their business, especially for the run cost of operating them. The pencils will be sharpened at some point and they’ll die off.
Anita
I totally agree with Rick that the domino effect is most likely to happen; and UFO and others comments about the new TLDs having only a novel marketing angle or as a few free/paid services by the big boys. Respectfully I would also like to note that I disagree with Frank’s predictions. With the exception of a very few possible success stories there is no way the bulk of the new TLDs can “really” take off for the regular registrars and domaining as buyable and widely used/traded domains simply because of the CORE HUMAN NATURE OF DISTRUST of anything unfamiliar – consumers will not be able to trust these new extensions no matter how many decades go by as:
(A) People will always look for trustworthy brands and stores that have an established reputation.
(B) .COM is not going anywhere. Period. The one that is first on the block of success will always win out on the “might be’s” of today and tomorrow. It’s as simple as that. The market for .COMs can only explode as dozens and dozens more companies realize this.
(C) CCTLDs will also do well because they bring focus to local consumers and there is increased TRUST and FAMILIARITY with their own national providers. However serious businesses will still want to acquire the .COM irrespective of their local consumer base.
Notes:
——–
1) There will always be a market for cheaper alternatives so the uninitiated, ignorant and total novices will be the main buyers in the market for the new .TLDs; but they will also smarten up and then the collapse will be inevitable. I hope small domainers don’t take too much of a beating on their investments and big ones don’t fool the small ones and the newbies into spending too much on their crappy .whatever domains.
2) .COM is everywhere and even more prominent thanks to the search engines. Even though Google and Bing have a near strangle hold on consumer search type ins. Consumers catch on quickly – for example when they stopped sending people to the .COM websites automatically and showed their search results, what did we all automatically do?? Yes we all now type in the .COM at the end of the domain name we want to go to and get bugged when we forget to do that (well I do :-)) In fact smartphones now have a .COM button on the keyboards and I’m pretty sure they should start coming into physical keyboards too if they haven’t already.
3) The one scenario where I forsee some success with the new TLDs is “if and only if” the owners of a great potential TLD like .shop or .free or .blog can have a tie-up (probably costing them millions more) with the big G & B & Y (or whatever comes up better than them :-)) for some sure traffic to their domains when those words are used in the search. That alone has some real potential to draw users to those sites and get them familiar with the extension in hordes but then again most people could react aversely to manipulation like that too plus that might be against Google’s current search ranking policy if they ever agree to that for money.
Note to Rick: There I went on record with a prediction of my own for the first time Rick :-) Not sure if others have thought if this could be a possibility before me.
John Molenko
People like Rick Swhartz, who own thousands of .Com domains are suddenly going to find their own virtual real estate dropping in value due to the influx of the new gTLD’s.
The 4 big operators ie Amazon, Google, Top Level Domain Holdings & Donuts are going to dominate the market with a very likely entry by Yahoo through a takeover of Top Level Domain Holdings.
No wonder Rick’s downplaying the effect of the new domains!!
Rick Schwartz
Here come the whores
John Molenko
Google being one of the largest owners / operators of the new gTLD’s will facillitate their introduction & mass acceptance.
Welcome to a New era or forever be left behind with your heads in the sand
Gordon
No Rick don’t hold back… tell them what you really think! :-)
Gordon
@John
Google, Amazon, Yahoo may be large but they have yet to dominate the domain market in all these years.
The future is more likely to be littered with failed registries that can’t get enough registrations to be profitable. Consumers, businesses especially, will face a future of starting websites only to have them shut down when the registry fails and closes.
How many times will that have to happen before consumers/businesses flee back to familiarity & stability.
With only a handful of top level domains now there are aleady marginal registries in the GTLDS and the CCTLDS never mind introducing 2200 new competitors.
Spammers and phishers and criminals will delight in a system where registries look the other way just so they can stay viable. It’s already happened with .info.
Had ICANN just continued to introduce 1-3 new extensions a year that would have been fine and more than handled market growth but the greed to line their collective swiss bank accounts has taken over common sense.
IDN Kool Aide Drinker
Nothing guarantees your right to the chinese equivalent of .com. You IDN loonies need to move on. How many .orgs do you currently baghold?