Afternoon Folks!!
What are the first things that come to mind when you talk about .Net?
For me it reminds me of the early days. It also reminds me of techies. It reminds me it is not .com and is the consolation prize.
It also says something about longevity as it is old and established. So .net sounds foundational and institutional while .biz sounds like a fly by night. Just saying'.
So with .Whatever that further defines and accentuates more established extensions intended or not. It does not mean that .mobi will be revived. It does mean that .net could emerge with a clearer identity than it has had before. I see it competing with .web perhaps. Of course I am sure .web wants to compete with .com.
But what I believe will happen is all the current extensions will get a second look. Some will look better than others and so while everyone is looking in one direction, don't be surprised if something flashes from a direction that could be surprising.
What happens to business when 700 gTLD's come out and the one that adds the most registrations next to .com is .net and at an accelerated pace? What happens when you add up the increases for the current extensions and their growth is bigger and faster than the growth driving it?
All I am saying is expect the unexpected. And when you expect the unexpected you don't just throw yourself into something. You observe. Kinda like the stock market. You can get killed between 9:30 and 10AM. Best to let things settle in and then take a fresh look at what things look like.
Rick Schwartz
UFO
.Com will always be the powerhouse commerce address of choice.
.Net will have some longevity because of ISP and registrars using them, but the advertising is not there so they will slowly dissappear into oblivion. There’s no unique selling point point on them.
.Org will likely continue off the back of the Not for Profit (They don’t want to be commercial or too marketing with (hack) type domains.
.Info = .dot .dead.
.US always thought it would be something of a dark horse, still cannot understand how they’ve not seriously been bought up by second tier companies in the US (Like small contractors etc) although I have my thoughts it may be because too many domainers sat on them and didn’t pitch at the appropriate price to the retail market. Although a 3 word .com likely beats a 2 word .US which means there’s plenty of domains.
.Web, can see that swamping .Net over time. Its the same context but more modern. Encapsulates designers etc etc as well, so it has more scope.
.Shop / .Store if acquired by Amazon expect it to thrive but under a different business model to which I’ve alluded in the past. It will make its marketplace like affiliate Avon representatives.
All the other extensions will go the way of .tel .mobi .whatever. I mean if I can’t even think of them, then what hope is there that the average person on the street will. Just a load of .foolsgold
Lastly, I’ve heard some say that their new extension is good / great etc because they’ll bundle web services with it etc. But what they don’t seem to get is that a domain name is NOT a technological solution. ANY domain name can be attached to any service provider simply via its dns settings. That IS NOT a unique selling point, AND most domain name owners DON’T want the ISP or whoever to own their own name. If they invest time and money in promoting a domain name then they want control of it and DON’T want to be tied in with an ISP. The only businesses that will be able to make a worthwhile tie up imho is the likes of Google/Yahoo/MSN etc because they’ll have so many eyeball users and their is large amounts of trust. Perhaps this is where .US will make a come back, by the disaffected US businesses looking to escape and migrating back across, good potential business in poaching these businesses back if you own the .US and want to flip.
M.G.
Domaining market goes the way Fortune 500 companies choose to go. And because most of them use .com, anything else will be for rest. We see some small changes in this market, such as domain hacks (goo.gl) or short forwarding names (a.co, t.co, o.co), but no big name use non-.com for their major website. So it looks like .com will be king for many years, as change (if come) takes time. There may be a value in short .anything names, but because new gTLD program blocks all two-characters marks, only one-character names will be valuable and even that is just maybe. Bottom line: short .com are winners…
Joao Mesquita
The best remarkable sign that .net will grow with this program is (for me at least) the fact that Verisign applied for idns (where they make a difference) + .verisign + .comsec, while Warren Buffett (via Berkshire Hathaway) bought more stocks from…Verisign.
http://onforb.es/1475quA
JBS
I mostly acquire dot nets for defensive registrations. Some I acquired alone but will not develop without the dot com. I just get em while they are cheap and will try for the dot coms later. I even have some .biz, .us, .co, etc. to accompany my best developed dot com names and keep the keywords away from competitors. I will reluctantly do that with some of the new gTLDs, but will never develop them. I guess it is about to get really expensive to continue plugging all those little bitty holes… But better than developing on a new gTLD (or a dot net) and trying to plug some grand DOT COM canyon.
Joe
.Net has always had the potential to become the world’s second most important gTLD, not in terms of registrations but in terms of awareness and actual use. Unfortunately it has always been considered as .com’s ugly stepsister and each of us domainers carries a degree of responsibility for this. However I agree that .net could get a second chance.
I also think the introduction of .web will make all the current web.ccTLD and web.gTLD domain names much more valuable. Just think about web.co.uk or web.de
Domenclature.com
The average person out there is internet savvy. Let me repeat that, the average person is “internet” savvy! They may not be domain-centric, they don’t need to be. The average person realizes what makes the internet tick. They know that Google, and other giants have a major role to play when it comes to successful online activity; and that besides the primary TLD .Com, secondary, as well as tertiary TLDs are mostly useless; not to talk of these nTLDs about to rain. Only domainers, and a few novelty seekers will be enmeshed in these things.
Equipped with shrewdness, astuteness, acuteness, acumen, acuity, intelligence, wit, canniness, common sense, discernment, insight, understanding, perceptiveness, perspicacity, knowledge, sagacity, the average person out there does not need to know what domainers know. They will be just fine.
To conclude, there will be a frenzy by domainers to register a bunch of key-word .whatever, and an attempt to hawk them shortly after, then the flat period, then the unknown. (The unknown being a euphemism for fall).
Domenclature.com
I forgot to mention that there is no discernible difference between .net and .web, even in the mind of the most fastidious.
Were those two TLDs to launch on the same day, one would have difficulty choosing. However, they did not launch on the same day. Therefore, .net is better, because it is older.
If I were the hawkers of .Web, i will be concerned that .net is not being scooped up. Who in their right mind will choose .web over old tested .net? But more importantly, who would pick .net over the standard, .com?
JBS
Just as a .net is worth a fraction of it’s .com counterpart, I think a .web domain will be always be worth a fraction of even the .net. In fact, I would wager that any new generic gTLD will be worth a fraction of the .net version of the name. So, for generic gTLDs, the current pecking order will remain the same well into the future.
As far as .nets actually going up in value overall, I think they will definitely become more desirable and therefore will gain in value as well.
Domenclature.com
@jobs
What I meant to say was if, say janesclothing.net were to realize that janesclothing.web is available for registration, I don’t think she has much incentive to switch over. We know for a fact that janesclothing.com will not.
LSM
It may marginalize .net further.
.org isn’t going anywhere.
If anything benefits in an age where the right of the dot becomes a relevant identifier, it’s probably the thus-far grossly neglected ccTLD of the United States.
M Altaf Hossain
TLD TOTAL
—– ——–
.com 110,801,841
.net 15,190,454
.org 10,382,606
.info 6,216,232
.us 1,806,255
.biz 2,585,384
Found above stats. as on 27.09.2013 for registered domains, It means that .Net holding second position(though very far below .com). How will .web beat .net or other old TLDs? I saw still popular development of .TV as business model. @Folks! please review overall stats. then forecast the future. Internet may sweep towards any direction, we may not say until and unless the real use comes into force in need, desire, & want forms.
M Altaf Hossain
Sorry !could not fix the stats. excel here.
patrick
As we are swamped with dot everything people will become confused, meaning dot com will remain king and only increase in value, as far as dot net goes it is a tried and true value domain for many industries,as long as you have the dot com sewn up. I also only register the dot net versions of my domains as a defensive move but having all three dot com, dot net, dot org ,makes logical sense as it makes it easier to sell the dot com as a package(dot net, dot org, included in sale).
There was a study of internet users in England a few years back and the respondents replied that any more tld,s would only confuse them, little sally may quickly forget what was right of that dot and just assume the dot com was it or will have what she’s looking for.
Darko Bijelic
Forget .net, biggest winners when .whatever come will be ccTLDs, i.e. country-code domains, like .de, .it, .es , .etc. Why? Because people (general public) tend to remember only domains that are constantly promoted to them. In USA it is .com, but in Germany it is .de, in Italy it is .it etc.
Danny Pryor
Those numbers say it all, to me. ;-)
Stan Renner
The .net extension sucks. Dotcom is King. Would you take anyone seriously who wanted to start a business on a .net, where they didn’t own the dotcom? I don’t think so. Keep pumping this crap extensions. It won’t work. Many domainers have comitted suicide or filed for bankruptcy, after having ruined their families on these crap extensions. A few major .net holders are on the verge of ruin as we speak, yet they continue to haunt the forums trying to PM newbies so that they can scam them with their .nets.
No serious domainer is looking to buy .nets from these forum clowns/scammers, so they take their .nets to the most ignorant people they can find and try to sell them their load of crap….lol.
J. Mahoney
Personally I agree with Rick, that flooding the market with these new extensions will only increase the value of the existing ones. This article hasn’t been commented on in a few months; as of right now I have seen a rise in .info sales, and the .info extension being lent a decent amount of credibility among developers.
The only extensions right now that are absolute garbage are .biz and .mobi.
It’s not gospel just my observations with .25 cents.