The Domain King's® thoughts on domain names, web traffic, increasing web sales, success, life, and plain-old Business & Marketing 101. Nothing happens until a sale is made!
BREAKING: .Boston Has Dropped into the Sea! Biggest nGTLD Collapse!
Morning Folks!!
I have seen some GTLD collapses as we see HUNDREDS of new GTLD's that are dying on the vine. But I have never seen a meltdown like .Boston. Arguably one of the stronger Geo GTLD's. Seems all geo's are in trouble. .Taipei, .Miami, .Vegas etc. All, DEAD EXTENSIONS still walking!
.Boston has 13,588 domains of which 9603 or over 70% are dropping. Of the 3953 still in the zone file, 3011 are parked. Leaving just 900 domains that may or may not be parked and registry holdbacks. Another so-called domain investor getting hammered with losses! WAKE UP FOOLS!
Just remember the ONLY ONES that lost money on nGTLD's were Domain Investors. Foolish domain investors just like the fools that pushed IDN's for 15 years and thought they were geniuses and looked down at everyone for not buying into THEIR crap. Not a single actual full-time domain investor has made a REAL living from them. Not a one!
The real collapse has yet to come. Stay tuned as the black hole of domaining continues to dominate GTLD's. I have been here every step of the way warning about this but many millions of dollars that were formerly in the pockets of Domain Investors (know-nothing domain investors) now belong to the registries. It's their money now. WAKE UP!!! You got fooled. You got taken. You listened to the wrong people geniuses! They sold you a bill of goods and now many of you are BROKE or are about to be.
The real collapse has yet to come. Stay tuned as the black hole of domaining continues to dominate GTLD's. I have been here every step of the way warning about this but many millions of dollars that were formerly in the pockets of Domain Investors (know-nothing domain investors) now belong to the registries. It's their money now. WAKE UP!!! You got fooled. You got taken. You listened to the wrong people geniuses! They sold you a bill of goods and now many of you are BROKE or are about to be.
Hey, Geniuses!! This is what GTLD's look like in a spellchecker! WAKE UP! Your emails, sensitive emails, will go to others, maybe your competition.
Rick Schwartz
27 thoughts on “BREAKING: .Boston Has Dropped into the Sea! Biggest nGTLD Collapse!”
Snoopy
Looks like 70% of .boston names are at Epik, is this Mr Monster dropping all his names?
Looks like DigitalTown’s stock price is down 99% and almost no cash left according to latest filings. Given that I’d imagine their 100k+ ntlds will be dropped over the next 12 months,
Interesting post. For the note, I update a monthly report focusing on domain name registration volumes for City name new gTLDs (not geo TLDs). Some TLDs like .TOKYO are doing better month after month. Some are decreasing in volume. I suggest to check on the “2018” tab to overview the complete year of 2018 (12 months).
It’s the Rob Monster / Epik / DigitalTown connection.. They’re losing their shirt.
At one point they had over 15k .boston domains registered.
More pain to come.
Digital Town was always designed to fleece Pink Sheet Share Holders. Dot Boston failed but Im sure the slimey people associated with the scam did well.
The industry needs to unit mainly around dotcom’s like in back in the days before the invasion of gtld’s. As the industry now looks more foolish than ever to outsiders with all the new c*appy gtld’s.
Since those 70 percent were owned by one person/entity, I wouldn’t really say that the TLD is failing–the numbers were overinflated by that one person/entity owning all those domains.
If it were a failing TLD, then it would be a lot of domain owners dropping the domains, no?
“If it were a failing TLD, then it would be a lot of domain owners dropping the domains, no?”
No, when a tld goes under it typically gets quietly sold for an undisclosed price, 1 cent in the dollar or whatever. .Mobi is a classic case of that, as are most of the recent ntld string sales
Bill Hartzer, the real issue though is monkey branching to better URLs by successful internet companies.
Over and over again we’ve seen companies that are successful on their cctld or .net then buy the .com and then effectively pare back their previous URL extension.
The collective conscious of the general public is so attuned to .com that each underlying cctld or geo migrates in order to take advantage of that intrinsic goto mentality of the public.
Domains are like search rankings. 90% go to the first page and the rest effectively to the second page. Same with domains, .com is like that 80:20 rule with cctlds on 20%. Nobody cares or wants the other junk, its not investment grade domains simply because no company wants to sit on third rate junk bond domains.
Bill, there is some truth in that.
Then again I don’t know of any company that can lose 70% of sales of a stagnant business and survives. Not a good day either way.
IMO, the canaries in the coal mine for these GEO gTLDs are .Vegas and .NYC. I believe these have the best chance for success. Much more than .Boston. I haven’t checked their stats in a while, but your post promoted me to do so. Not too good: https://ntldstats.com/tld/nyc https://ntldstats.com/tld/vegas
Thanks, Rick for sending me to my @ gmail.com all your posts that I have not received until today which have made me very happy today, March 4, 2019, my birthday.
Boston is a good word from a big city in the US.
I remember when leaving this gTLD extension some of these investors domains to be in the 1st Annual Asheville Domain Investor Meetup! vibrate with joy for this extension and buy enough domains of a single word, surely make good sales of them.
What you write about the investors domains of all the years from 1995 until today have bought gTLD and (.app) is a good very good investment and other extensions that if you accompany them with a single keyword easy to remember is a similar (.com) because the pronunciation is the same as I have ireportsoftware.com and ireport.software buy the latter as premium.
You are right in a lot of what you write about the gTDL although I believe that some extensions will hold more time for a simple reason there are many investors domains and registrars that lose a lot of money and that none want to lose and there will still be some even if you write what you always write off the gTLDs.
Any estimates on how much cash domain investors, not the registries, lost on GTLDs?
a) 10 million
b) 20 million
c) More
d) Too much to count
Well, at least no one is peddling them any more.
Who were the big winners? Verisign (which will probably cage up .web for a few more years), and the registries that got “settlements” in the auctions? Which registries made the biggest scores off the GTLDs?
BEcause when I looked I saw them buy registries with Google going YES YES finally the end of .com
Then sunrise came and you went out to buy Homes.boston or Homes. and got the message “Sorry that domain is reserved and not available to you scrubs.”
So Google fkn with us and they don’t know how it works and instead of .com competition we got . with $10,000 renewal tag. F them losers. They missed their chance. They are probably thinking next time we will relaunch and do it better and yet .com will grow more and more.
Steve Fox, yes, they got greedy. If they’d just had an auction and pushed them all out and then had a rebate on renewal if they had proper functioning websites then they could have gained some traction.
The real issue is that the general public have got better things to think about and remember than domain extensions. The internet is .com and for nations its their .co.uk or whatever. Even companies on the cctld really want to step up to the .com as the multinationals and big players always trade from .com. Its a status thing.
Oh yes everybody, I’ve read that these ntlds are like BTC (Bitcoins) in terms of latent potential.
News for everyone, BTC will be WORTHLESS in a decade.
As I’d said a while back eventually the retail banks would develop their own crypto currencies and the reserve banks of nations would adopt those. And then they would regulate the hell out of BTC making all its lack of level playing field advantages dissipate. A number of Retail banks in Britain are doing just that, and we have the HMRC (Your IRS) introducing digital VAT (Sales tax returns) so they can see all the underlying transactions…. so don’t think for a moment they’re not interested in a digital currency that is traceable.
BTC is Sony Beta Max. Early adopters are not always winners.
.nyc is thriving. Shouldn’t be grouped with .boston and it I’m happy Rick left .nyc out of his comment, “Seems all geo’s are in trouble. .Taipei, .Miami, .Vegas etc. All, DEAD EXTENSIONS still walking!”.
RM’s/Epik’s bulk .boston drops (and more recently re-registration of these domain names) are definitely problematic for that namespace – which has zero city backing.
I wrote an article today about how the City of New York/Neustar gave .nyc a stronger foundation than most other geoTLDs, and the TLD has a nexus restriction and higher than most registration/renewal cost – yet it still goes strong: http://www.developed.nyc/why-the-nyc-tld-namespace-has-a-solid-foundation/
Despite being a .nyc domain investor primarily, looking for opportunities, the lack of an investor opportunity with the newTLDs shouldn’t negate the very real end user value and opportunity which exists. Arguments to the contrary are not sincere. End users can benefit from newTLDs in many areas where investors (including myself) cannot – and that should be ok.
Snoopy
Looks like 70% of .boston names are at Epik, is this Mr Monster dropping all his names?
Snoopy
Looks like DigitalTown’s stock price is down 99% and almost no cash left according to latest filings. Given that I’d imagine their 100k+ ntlds will be dropped over the next 12 months,
https://onlinedomain.com/2018/02/21/domain-name-news/digitaltown-owns-100000-new-gtld-domains/#comments
Jovenet Consulting
Interesting post. For the note, I update a monthly report focusing on domain name registration volumes for City name new gTLDs (not geo TLDs). Some TLDs like .TOKYO are doing better month after month. Some are decreasing in volume. I suggest to check on the “2018” tab to overview the complete year of 2018 (12 months).
Easy Money
Such a predicament has been going on for years. The irony is, smart people still fall like lemmings when a new gtld comes to town.
xb.com
.boston pending delete… who cares? I will drop all of my new Gs. No sales.
BullS
oh No….they are playing “Please Don’t Come to Boston….”
Richard
It’s the Rob Monster / Epik / DigitalTown connection.. They’re losing their shirt.
At one point they had over 15k .boston domains registered.
More pain to come.
Richard
DigitalTown is becoming Digital Ghost Town.
Matthew
Digital Town was always designed to fleece Pink Sheet Share Holders. Dot Boston failed but Im sure the slimey people associated with the scam did well.
Richard
.boston peaked at around 22k names.. Not so sure that this scam was profitable given the upfront costs to run that string.
Johan
The industry needs to unit mainly around dotcom’s like in back in the days before the invasion of gtld’s. As the industry now looks more foolish than ever to outsiders with all the new c*appy gtld’s.
Bill Hartzer
Since those 70 percent were owned by one person/entity, I wouldn’t really say that the TLD is failing–the numbers were overinflated by that one person/entity owning all those domains.
If it were a failing TLD, then it would be a lot of domain owners dropping the domains, no?
Snoopy
“If it were a failing TLD, then it would be a lot of domain owners dropping the domains, no?”
No, when a tld goes under it typically gets quietly sold for an undisclosed price, 1 cent in the dollar or whatever. .Mobi is a classic case of that, as are most of the recent ntld string sales
UFO
Bill Hartzer, the real issue though is monkey branching to better URLs by successful internet companies.
Over and over again we’ve seen companies that are successful on their cctld or .net then buy the .com and then effectively pare back their previous URL extension.
The collective conscious of the general public is so attuned to .com that each underlying cctld or geo migrates in order to take advantage of that intrinsic goto mentality of the public.
Domains are like search rankings. 90% go to the first page and the rest effectively to the second page. Same with domains, .com is like that 80:20 rule with cctlds on 20%. Nobody cares or wants the other junk, its not investment grade domains simply because no company wants to sit on third rate junk bond domains.
Rick Schwartz
Bill, there is some truth in that.
Then again I don’t know of any company that can lose 70% of sales of a stagnant business and survives. Not a good day either way.
David J Castello
IMO, the canaries in the coal mine for these GEO gTLDs are .Vegas and .NYC. I believe these have the best chance for success. Much more than .Boston. I haven’t checked their stats in a while, but your post promoted me to do so. Not too good:
https://ntldstats.com/tld/nyc
https://ntldstats.com/tld/vegas
Jose
Thanks, Rick for sending me to my @ gmail.com all your posts that I have not received until today which have made me very happy today, March 4, 2019, my birthday.
Boston is a good word from a big city in the US.
I remember when leaving this gTLD extension some of these investors domains to be in the 1st Annual Asheville Domain Investor Meetup! vibrate with joy for this extension and buy enough domains of a single word, surely make good sales of them.
What you write about the investors domains of all the years from 1995 until today have bought gTLD and (.app) is a good very good investment and other extensions that if you accompany them with a single keyword easy to remember is a similar (.com) because the pronunciation is the same as I have ireportsoftware.com and ireport.software buy the latter as premium.
You are right in a lot of what you write about the gTDL although I believe that some extensions will hold more time for a simple reason there are many investors domains and registrars that lose a lot of money and that none want to lose and there will still be some even if you write what you always write off the gTLDs.
Happy Day. Jose.
Jay
its this simple.
BostonCondos.com is a six figure winner
Condos.Boston is ass backwards and a total loser in my humble opinion.
Jay
Condos.Boston is reserved by .Boston lol smh.
Snoopy
It is a good name for sure but who is going to pay 6 figures for it?? Even 10 years ago it was not worth that kind of money.
Jeff Schneider
Hello Rick, Next week,3-11 through 3-15 Sell ALL remaining BABA dollar cost averaging positions JAS 3-9-19
Gratefully, Jeff Schneider (Contact Group) (Metal Tiger) (Former Rockefeller IBEC Marketing Intelligence, Analyst/Strategist) (Licensed CBOE Commodity Hedge Strategist) (Domain Master )www.UseBiz.com
steve
Any estimates on how much cash domain investors, not the registries, lost on GTLDs?
a) 10 million
b) 20 million
c) More
d) Too much to count
Well, at least no one is peddling them any more.
Who were the big winners? Verisign (which will probably cage up .web for a few more years), and the registries that got “settlements” in the auctions? Which registries made the biggest scores off the GTLDs?
steve fox
BEcause when I looked I saw them buy registries with Google going YES YES finally the end of .com
Then sunrise came and you went out to buy Homes.boston or Homes. and got the message “Sorry that domain is reserved and not available to you scrubs.”
So Google fkn with us and they don’t know how it works and instead of .com competition we got . with $10,000 renewal tag. F them losers. They missed their chance. They are probably thinking next time we will relaunch and do it better and yet .com will grow more and more.
UFO
Steve Fox, yes, they got greedy. If they’d just had an auction and pushed them all out and then had a rebate on renewal if they had proper functioning websites then they could have gained some traction.
The real issue is that the general public have got better things to think about and remember than domain extensions. The internet is .com and for nations its their .co.uk or whatever. Even companies on the cctld really want to step up to the .com as the multinationals and big players always trade from .com. Its a status thing.
UFO
Oh yes everybody, I’ve read that these ntlds are like BTC (Bitcoins) in terms of latent potential.
News for everyone, BTC will be WORTHLESS in a decade.
As I’d said a while back eventually the retail banks would develop their own crypto currencies and the reserve banks of nations would adopt those. And then they would regulate the hell out of BTC making all its lack of level playing field advantages dissipate. A number of Retail banks in Britain are doing just that, and we have the HMRC (Your IRS) introducing digital VAT (Sales tax returns) so they can see all the underlying transactions…. so don’t think for a moment they’re not interested in a digital currency that is traceable.
BTC is Sony Beta Max. Early adopters are not always winners.
John Colascione
When Rob left DT, it was a sign that it was over for the enterprise, IMO.
Matt
.nyc is thriving. Shouldn’t be grouped with .boston and it I’m happy Rick left .nyc out of his comment, “Seems all geo’s are in trouble. .Taipei, .Miami, .Vegas etc. All, DEAD EXTENSIONS still walking!”.
RM’s/Epik’s bulk .boston drops (and more recently re-registration of these domain names) are definitely problematic for that namespace – which has zero city backing.
I wrote an article today about how the City of New York/Neustar gave .nyc a stronger foundation than most other geoTLDs, and the TLD has a nexus restriction and higher than most registration/renewal cost – yet it still goes strong:
http://www.developed.nyc/why-the-nyc-tld-namespace-has-a-solid-foundation/
I also wrote about how Google believes new extensions nail it:
http://www.developed.nyc/new-domain-extensions-nail-it-says-google/
Despite being a .nyc domain investor primarily, looking for opportunities, the lack of an investor opportunity with the newTLDs shouldn’t negate the very real end user value and opportunity which exists. Arguments to the contrary are not sincere. End users can benefit from newTLDs in many areas where investors (including myself) cannot – and that should be ok.
That being said even as a .nyc investor I’m now making a profit while growing my portfolio:
1. http://www.developed.nyc/investors-experience-nyc-domains/
2. http://www.developed.nyc/nyc-domains-are-selling-i-just-broke-even/