Morning Folks!!
The new gTLD's have a very tough road to cross. The sharp ones have already thought of this. Then many have not. So let me pose the question and see what the answers are. What happens to a new gTLD when all the domains that are registered are only to domainers and there is not an end-user in sight? What happens?? Tulip Festival?
The reason .com is a success is from the approximately 120 million registrations, probably 80-100 million of them are registered by individual end users worldwide. Tens of Millions of end users. Matter of fact, my prediction is .com will have more end-user registrations in one day than 700 new gtld's combined have in a day, week.......
My point is these gTLD owners must walk a very fine line or they risk collapse. Another risk of collapse I should say because I have shown pitfall after pitfall after pitfall. Huge pitfalls and a dynamic difference from what happened with .com. The pitfall is much deeper and more damaging if you have not thought of it.
I think some will get in trouble pretty fast when they don't see registrations flying in and when they do, it will be domainers. Which devil do you want to deal with first because they are both likely scenarios that many will have to deal with? How does an extension survive in the long run if 100% of your base is domainers? And on the other hand. How does an extension survive in the long run if your base is not domainers?
Worse than all this is many of these gTLD operators are not financially prepared to make a difference. They could not even afford to hire professional domainers to consult with. They have virtually no advertising budget to advertise with. It is stunning to watch.
So we know once this race starts some 20 new extensions will come out each week. That is 4 per business day. Really? I don't recall a "spectacle" like this ever to have happened before. Maybe they can create a frenzy. Maybe they can't. Chaos for sure.
Are they anticipating the elbows flying in this crowded field? I could come and make a list of so many pitfalls that have never been discussed internally by some of these companies. So when they go into battle the marketplace, they could get whooped! I see it less with the domainer based outfits because they have a knowledge base the others just don't have but the carcusses of the others has the potential to impeded and derail everyone. Like a train wreck. Like a multi car pileup and you just happen to be caught in the middle due to no fault of your own.
We'll see. But it's tough to win the battles you don't see and come sneaking up behind you. The battles some are not armed to fight. The battles and battles and battles before we even get to the main battle of Need, Want, Desire.
Rick Schwartz
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