I Had a Nightmare About New Top Level Domain Names

Tuesday, July 6th, 2010

I need a real vacation.

You’d think a holiday weekend would help me relax and forget about domain names. Apparently not.

Last night I had a dream about new top level domain names. It went something like this…

My phone started ringing in the middle of the night, and people were leaving nasty messages for me.

“I went to your web site and it didn’t have the information. Thanks for wasting my time!”

“Your web site is a scam!”

“I’m going to report you to the authorities!”

In my dream, I try to figure out what the sudden outburst is about. Then I open up the Wall Street Journal and see the problem. Someone is promoting the same second level domain I own with one of the newfangled top level domain names. Only problem is that everyone is typing in .com at the end instead of whatever the advertised TLD is. They’re ending up at my site and are disappointed to not find what they’re looking for.

This dream isn’t that far-fetched. In fact, this very thing happened to me nearly a decade ago but with confusion over .net vs. .com. A large organization promoted a service at .net, and people kept coming to my .com instead. I got angry voicemails and people saying the promotion had misled them. Making matters worse, that organization was robocalling people to advertise the web site, so people started yelling at me for disturbing their dinner.

As for the ads in the Wall Street Journal? I think that crept into my dream because of an ad that caught my attention in the back of Forbes this week. I must be the only one who hasn’t heard of the .come TLD yet:

Further Reading:

  1. Here Come the .Brand Top Level Domain Names
  2. Will IDN Top Level Domains Kill Existing IDN Domain Names?

4 Comments » - Posted in Uncategorized by

Comments

  1. Tim
    July 6th, 2010 | 8:28 am

    LOL…..I’ve got one whereby I get about eight to ten emails a day now for some six years with folks wanting to know why their account was debited and demanding their money back.

    Mine is a .com but the other is a .co.uk .

    At first I tried to help these folks out but it just became overwhelming to keep answering.

  2. Juan
    July 6th, 2010 | 9:16 am

    LOL….. For me, .com is the king. :)

  3. Jon
    July 6th, 2010 | 10:34 am

    This is the main reason I decided to put my domain names behind Whois Privacy.

  4. Khan
    July 14th, 2010 | 10:37 pm

    Ah…I believe “.come” might have been the secret fall-back possibility had .xxx been rejected. As for developing “professional management” in the given industry, well…

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