A recap of what I did, saw, and heard during NamesCon last week.
Last week was the inaugural NamesCon conference in Las Vegas.
In case you weren’t one of the close to 600 people who experienced it in person, everything you’ve heard is spot on: it was a home run. Richard Lau, Jodi Chamberlain, and Jothan Frakes did a fantastic job pulling this conference together in a short period of time. They saw a hole in the domain conference circuit and filled it with zeal.
I’ve already written a few posts about the conference, and I’ll write more in-depth posts about some of my observations the rest of this week. This post is a brief walk-through.
Monday
NamesCon attendees strolled in most of the day Monday. The day didn’t officially kick off until 8pm, when .xyz hosted the opening night party. It was packed.
Tuesday
Monday morning started with a keynote by Jennifer Wolfe, a new TLD consultant who works primarily with brands. I’ve read Wolfe’s book, which explains how companies can leverage .brand top level domains. Her talk also discussed how companies that didn’t apply for a .brand could leverage other new TLDs.
The challenge I have with her book and her talk is that all of her examples are things companies can currently do with .com domains or other extensions. Merely creating a domain.brand instead of domain.brand.com or brand.com/domain isn’t big innovation, and won’t change how people interact with brands online. I have yet to hear how a brand can do something truly new or different with a .brand, although I’m all ears.
Las Vegas Mayor Carolyn Goodman then came on stage to pitch Las Vegas as a good place to do business. She also mentioned .vegas, but made a faux paus: she accidentally said Vegas.com one time. We’ll be hearing a lot of these mistakes over the next couple years.
After Goodman’s talk, the conference split up into three tracks. I stuck around the main conference area to hear five new top level domain applicants discuss their plans. There are a wide variety of marketing plans and price ranges for new TLDs. On one end of the spectrum was .xyz, which is open to everyone and will cost about $10. On the other end is .luxury, which will truly be a luxury item costing hundreds of dollars to register.
Just outside the main conference room was the exhibit hall, which you had to walk through to get to the conference area. The exhibit area was much bigger than any non-ICANN domain conference I’ve been to in a while. It was similar to DomainFest a few years back. One of the big draws was .buzz’s massage booth.
I missed the next couple sessions due to meetings. Had I not been busy, I really wanted to see the “New TLDs + Domainers” panel to hear what Top Level Domain Holdings Chief Strategy Officer Fred Krueger had to say. I wondered if he’d carry the same tone that he did in a comment over at Domain Incite, where he wrote “…New TLD registries are going to have the last laugh as all these new TLDs crush (and I mean crush) dot com domainers. Good luck standing up to this tsunami of alternatives to your bad and overpriced domain name portfolios gentlemen.”
Apparently he delivered. Shane Cultra has a great post about what Krueger said, and draws some great analogies.
Around lunchtime I managed to sneak in a trip to .xyz’s new office, just a few minutes down Tropicana from the hotel. You can read more about .xyz and its Las Vegas office building here.
In the afternoon I attended the legal panel. Despite an all-star cast including John Berryhill, Bret Fausett, Ari Goldberger, Daliah Saper, and Albert Angel, the session failed to draw a big audience. That’s a shame, because they each gave a great story about stupid legal mistakes people have made. I have a separate post (coming soon) with all of their stories.
The programming concluded with Frank Schilling’s keynote, which you can read about here.
The day ended with Water Night, a charity event that raised over $100,000 for The Water School.
Wednesday
In the morning, Jodee Rich, who’s backing the bid for .ceo and runs social media analytics company PeopleBrowsr, discussed his view of the domain market going forward and .ceo. I don’t really understand .ceo, but I went into his talk with an open mind.
He discussed how social networks are not niche enough, and people don’t want to post niche subject matter on Facebook when so many viewers won’t be interested.
The idea of niche social networks isn’t new. The joke at startup conferences five years ago was that everyone was starting “a social network for ________”, with the blank filled in by teachers, knitters, athletes, or people who like to be choked by dead cats.
The difference may be that Rich’s company has the Twitter data to target these niches. Whether there’s demand, I don’t know. He plans to use some of this data and pre-made web pages to target CEOs for .ceo. Although I’m sure there’s a market for a network for CEO’s, I still don’t understand why adding a new top level domain name layer to it adds value. I also think that if someone started emailing me from a .ceo address, I’d think they were a poser rather than a leader.
Rich concluded with an encore to his interesting .ceo video played during the ICANN meeting with more of the same, which some people in the crowd labeling it as sexist.
Jeremy Schoemaker, aka ShoeMoney, followed up with a keynote about how he’s made money online and the value of creating prospect lists.
Around lunchtime I moderated a panel featuring some of my domain blogging peers. Afterward I stopped in for part of the last-minute visit by WordPress founder Matt Mullenweg. He had some interesting comments about domain names.
The next programming I caught was Bing’s Duane Forrester, who started his talk with a discussion about domain names and search. I’ll have a separate post about that later.
As things started to wind down, the Ping Pong tournament in the exhibit hall heated up. A lot of familiar faces squared off. Ray King of Top Level Design, a new TLD applicant, won the tournament.
Thursday
I headed back to Austin on Thursday morning.
Las Vegas has this cruel idea that it should take every nickel you have before you leave town. Its airport is stuffed with slot machines trying to grab your attention before your flight boards.
I actually hadn’t gambled at all while in Vegas. I was too busy. But I stopped at a slot machine at the aiport. When I quickly went up $50, I decided to call it quits.
It was just $50, but for once I could say I left Las Vegas a winner.
Domenclature.com says
LOL, congratulations on the 50.0!!
Kassey says
Thanks for the summary, Andrew. I look forward to reading your separate reports.
Peter LaMantia says
Andrew
Sounds like a great event for the domain community. Thanks for posting.
Regarding your comment on why .brand is different and you don’t see it…yet! Deja vu, we have had this discussion before and I do respect your candidate view. Perhaps different because we all come from different online marketing worlds, one brand marketing, customer engagement, brand channel management perspective vs. a domain space expertise, value, evolution perspective, etc.
Split .brand value difference into two categories: 1. Defense 2. Opportunity
Defensively brand enterprises will anchor and educate customers through partners and channels that if it is not name.brand, it may not be brand authentic. Particularly valuable for luxury goods, financial services… Once the public knows this,(and it wont take long) the need to spend capital to defend broadly in other TLDs starts to wain. Still important on key marks and terms but no longer is it a free for all where nefarious actors add a character to a SLD and phish, fraud and steal. Defensive strategies suck up “throw away” capital where investing in .brand ecosystem is ROI generating capital. This shifts the paradigm and will give brands more control over their brand online.
.Brand is totally different in many respects. The ability to create a proprietary ecosystem, owned, controlled, measured on a branded name space is a big deal because it makes digital engagement resonate, makes it work. It is an opportunity to create an authentic, authoritative ecosystem on a variety of use cases. Some may say, I can deploy a channel strategy on brand.com/channel or customer strategy on brand.com/customer. Technically, sure, albeit complicated and expensive to manage but doable no question with time and money. The question is, “is it effective?” “is there ROI?” often marginal is the answer relative to the cost, so it’s not done widely. Why no? Directory structures are not intuitive, unmemorable and not well branded and loooonnnngggg. No one types them. Humans find easiest paths – I use one sports news source in my market simply because it is 5 characters to type where the best competitor is 11 characters. Both have great interfaces and information but I go to one because as a user, it is easier to get there. Path of least resistance – memorable. This makes it the winner in the market not because the service is better, because the access is better. Brands have this opportunity.
name.brand changes the value equation because it is usable and memorable to end-users. That ease tips it.
Even straight forward along this thinking are destination urls for promotions, same principle, yes I can set up brand.com/keymessage but who remembers it, who types it. No one. Enter keymessage.brand, product.brand, service.brand. Marketing communications is all about messages that are simple, new, better and different, easy to understand and resonate with me. This is and I will remember it.
Sometimes it takes a minor change to make a difference, where millions of dollars invested cannot resolve. ie: Place a product at knee level in a grocery store – no one buys it. Place it at eye level and it rocks the category. Nothing different accept the ease of access.
I believe .brand is at digital eye level. So even if you forget any technology debate, these are real capability differences based on end-user experience differences – name.brand beats brand.com/name all day long.
Andrew Allemann says
This is where I get lost. The only difference I see between .brand and brand.com is three letters. I can offer something.brand.com now. Everyone on the web should know that this is my authenticate web destination, and everything under it is “real”.
Given restrictions ICANN has placed on new TLDs, something.brand.com is easier and cheaper.
Will brands be able to dial back protection because consumers know that only domains ending in the .brand are authenticate? Take a look at phishing emails. Do they lead to domains that are really similar to brand.com? Or are they just masked links that go to ridiculous URLs? Mostly the latter. Yet people still get duped.
Kassey says
@Peter, Excellent discussion from the marketing perspective.
Peter LaMantia says
re sub-domain. “something.brand.com” those extra characters, another dot – it matters to general users.
Your a pro Andrew. People just don’t understand domains. I have dealt with this for over 15 years, explaining to SMBs what a domain is – why it matters, good bad ugly etc.
We think they should get it – seems simple to understand sub-domains or directory structures, but most of the public just glazes over.
As you are watching TV or listening to the radio over the next weeks. Look/listen at the 1sec flash of destination urls. Wait a couple minutes and see if you can type it. Remember. Your a pro. Think no knowledge. Think how keymessage.brand is better. chair.ikea, prius.toyota, beer.bud
Fun stuff!
Last week I saw a 4th level domain name in an add. GIGGLES.
Andrew Allemann says
I agree it’s confusing. And people will be confused for many years after first seeing domains like something.kpmg.
Domainer Extraordinaire says
After .everything fails this year, maybe next years theme will apply to smart domainers and I’ll have reason to attend.
Aaron Pace says
Hi Andrew,
I would have liked to met in person at NamesCon. I was there too. Your articles are awesome! Do you know anything about my brand “dot(.)less”. I think it would be a great new top level domain for round two. Since we are both in the Austin area, we should meet up sometime.
Aaron P.
AdvertisingStandards.org
Dot(.)Less Website Domains™