Morning Folks!!
Coming to the right conclusions with less information and doing it early. Isn't that what speculation is about? Figuring it out early or first? I figured this out in 1996-1997 after starting in 1995 and each day I figure out a little more and I will never apologize for being first on a line. Or first to see something. Or first to take action. Or first to register a domain name. And anyone that would point to that as anything negative could only define themselves, not me.
Like I said, Berkens is my research department because he finds things FIRST. Newspapers are in business to be first. They want to break the story first.
In what I do, I want to find all the pitfalls first. It's the pitfalls that need attention and that is what I focus on. I tune out the blue sky talk totally as that is a trap for the naive. You only see the blue sky if you survive the tornado and storms they swear are not there.
The beginning, the end and the pitfalls along the trail. What else really matters? I don't care about the BS drama and lipstick along the way.
A pitfall can never be ignored. So they have to be addressed. But a pitfall can only be filled with an argument that is sound and holds water.
I have been making posts on ".whatever" for 2.5 years now. Dozens of posts with .whatever in the title and some 90 posts examining it from top to bottom. I thought about it for a long time before I ever wrote a single word and my main job sitting here is thinking and playing out different scenarios looking for answers. Real answers. Not based on what I want, but based on the reality of what I see and the future as I see it unfolding. On the record for the record before it becomes commonplace.
And when I was doing that on Sunday I found......
Another argument that makes no sense.
On one side I am told by gtld companies that 5-6 billion people are yet to go online. And this huge expansion coming. ok, fine. Let's say I buy into that for the MOMENT since the buying power for about 3 billion of them is zilch. But leave that aside, their argument is for those 6 billion. So I will follow their yellow brick road.
Then a few minutes later they say how they are going to leave .com as the market share gets all diluted and watered down. How does that make any sense when they just got through telling me about those 6 billion being added?? Which yellow brick road do they want me to walk down. Which one am I to believe? Because these 2 premises collide. They very simply collide. They can't have it both ways. So when you stick to the numbers, there is no room for bullshit like this.
I am in sales. These are arguments that don't hold water and they contradict themselves. Am I supposed to swallow this?
The facts of the matter are already there with other parallels for those that choose to look at them and understand them. Folks want to look at Las Vegas and their growth without looking at other places and their growth. But again, there was a REASON to go to Vegas. There was a need, there was a want and there was a desire for gambling and entertainment and hot chicks and booze. They were the only place you could go for legalized gaming in those days.
Now look. You have all types of states and countries doing the gaming and lottery and yes Las Vegas has collapsed right?????? Is that what horse shit I am supposed to swallow guys??
Macau, lotteries, indian casinos, islands, Reno, Lake Tahoe, Cruise Ships. Are you kidding me. HOW did that hurt Las Vegas?? It didn't and it made it even greater than it was. So your argument is not consistent with empirical evidence aka FACTS!
A rising tide lifts all boats. Thinking .com will go down in value or have less traffic is absolutely the nuttiest thing I have EVER heard. It goes against empirical evidence I just pointed to. Give that one up!
Ok?
I make points with evidence. And why would anyone even argue these points? It may work for folks that know nothing about domain names when you are raising funds, but this is nonsense inside the walls of this industry by folks that really should understand this all much better. They are coming to assumptions that are not backed up by examples of history. Like I keep on repeating now. Empirical Evidence. Las Vegas just the latest in a series proving the fallacy of this silly argument.
And we don't have to wait 20 years to see the winner. It will be evident each week on Ron Jackson's report. More Empirical Evidence. Not wishful thinking or a fallacious hypothesis. But past facts. The test holds true over and over and over again.
And just remember, most of the biggest deals are still not disclosed. Escrow.com started about 66% if my memory serves me correctly. And the bigger they are, the less chance they are disclosed. And even in a disclosure can be hidden as far as exact amount paid when you buy a company for their domain name.
Folks are free and welcome to speculate on anything they choose. Some will make money. Most will lose money. But selling on false assumptions and false arguments that are squarely against history is weak and I think does not help the position of those that use it. Hundreds of different sales strategies that are going to cause their own set of collisions.
Some are going to struggle desperately to stay above water. Some are going to sink right to the very bottom. These are absolute givens. They are facts just awaiting time to confirm them. But in speculation you have to determine those facts BEFORE they are facts. But to do that, you must have the facts to begin with and the history to back it up. So when I am presented a false set of facts, based on false history, on the heels of .Mobi, .biz, .pro, .xxx, well then I have a RIGHT to raise these objections and questions and be on record and so do you.
I don't have to sell a thing, they do. But please raise the level of the conversation to match the reality at hand and the audience you are addressing. I would certainly be much more receptive to that level then some of the nonsense I am hearing. I do not wish for the failure of any extension. Quite the opposite. I root for their success. Their success is not a threat it is fuel. I am stunned that otherwise intelligent folks would see it like the glass is half full. The greatest success would have .com and many other extensions overflowing.
Look at my writings and you will see it is consistent with the rise in popularity of .tv. I think .tv will benefit from this. I don't see a single extension suffering. I see only expansion regardless of population. 7 billion people is not how you measure. You measure by companies and how many each of them will control. Companies at one time had one website. Now they have dozens or hundreds or thousands. THAT is the population I focus on. Those are the folks that can and will expand the most and the quickest. Many of them with decent budgets.
Why would anyone think that selling a win-lose concept comes out as a winning hand?? The world is about win-win. That is the way to get people's attention. Win-win. Show them a way to expand their online presence. Show them only positives. Anything built on negatives or false assumptions or fallacious information will eventually collapse.
And collapsing is different from failing because this is all 99.9% forseeable.
1234567890123 without any .com rings every phone in the world. there are a total of 9,999,999,999,999.
9.9 TRILLION combinations with those 13 digits. Maybe a few less actually. But in theory......
Now last time I looked you can go many times n=more than 13 digits before you add the .com. You can go to 63 I think it is. That pus a hole in their argument before I even start my argument and I can prove my argument with NUMBERS not EMOTION 63 different ways. I can have more combinations with the same 13 digits that ring every phone in the world. All I need to do is substitute one letter for a number. I can use just the letter "A" until with all the variables. Then "B" the "C". Then after I got to z I could start to use 2 letter variables. Then 3. Then all words that use up to 13 letters. Then I have not even mentioned dashes. Nor have I dsaid anything about 14 digit domain.
Smell the BULLSHIT?? There must be a math major here somewhere that can highlight what infinity might look like. I will admit, .com is NOT infinite. Tho for the purposes we use it for, it is. So please don't expect anyone with an ounce of sense to swallow bullshit. I just proved it and I barely scratched the surface. I could sit here every day for the next 20 years and I would not run out if examples when I hear we are running out of .com. Not sure if there is even a name for a number the size of what we are talking about.
Point is this is 100% fallacious. Pure and simple. What happens when I do it on a low-level like this, is the antenna goes up and you look for other fallacious arguments and you start to see a picture being developed. I am truly trying to save these folks from a Kodak moment when they go on the world stage. I think these things are poisoning the waters a bit and it is self-inflicted poison. Needless! They have stronger arguments. I hope!
Success for a gtld does not translate to anything bad for any of us. Between this post and yesterdays post, I just try to have a balanced approach and at the same time not listen to silly stuff and my job is to spotlight silly stuff so we can focus on the real subjects. Which are the extensions themselves, the adaptation by the MASSES, the reasons why without making the weak case that has been made.
.com is a phenomenon. The graph that Verisign released is another example of how hard this is going to be. STUDY that chart!! Look at the SLIVER they are all going to fight over. Wake me up when any of them get out of the "Other" category. Any of them. Registry success has nothing to do with our success. The one that has the best chance is .web and it is no secret.
And as far as my 20 year plan and those trying to use that to cover them now. This is what I wrote as a comment on TheArtofTheName.com yesterday:
"To be honest. I could not put a 20 year plan together today given the circumstances today. The 20 year plan was for a unique moment in time. With a specific medium. That had specific parallels. And I put a time stamp until we hit critical mass. And it worked!!
I never had one before and I doubt I will ever have one again. People have to eat today with a vision of the future. But in this fast paced medium, 20 years is CRAZY! I focus on now and the 36 months in front of us as a rule and year to year as a basis for progress.
The Internet was a unique circumstance because it was the largest endeavor in the history of the world and I realized that and what the changes would look like in 2013.
But this is worse that Kool-Aid because it is laced with BS and many ignore the basic questions that are asked.
At the end of the day it will be content and consumer acceptance that decides. Not any of us. All we can do is bet on the eventual outcome."
You can see the video from T.R.A.F.F.I.C. There is no anger in the argument, there is just a disagreement among friends about where the road goes and I think their compass is not calibrated correctly. :-) The future will sort it out. They took out their wallets and are taking a risk. Bravo! The question is risk based on what? A question we get to ask when it comes to our wallets. Especially since it is hard if not impossible to point out past successes with similar products with less competition.
Rick Schwartz
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