.Co Internet CEO says .co off to good start but hard work lies ahead.
In a blog post titled “The State of the .CO Domain“, .Co Internet CEO Juan Calle released some numbers about the effects of the company’s Super Bowl commercial tie-in with Go Daddy.
Calle says that sales on Super Bowl Sunday were 35 times as much as a typical Sunday. Traffic to the company’s Opportunity.co and COinternet.co web sites was up 100x.
Of course we don’t know the base for typical Sunday registrations, but the important thing is that this momentum continues.
He also said that .co had a good launch but has a long road ahead of it — pointing down the road 5, 10, or even 20 years:
Frankly, it’s really far too early to pop the champagne corks and party like its 1999. What we have on our hands, folks – is simply a good start. A solid launch.
Calle noted two success metrics that the company won’t use in a silo: the number of domains registered and aftermarket sales. He notes that they could easily boost the number of domains registered by dropping the price to $1.99. He also thinks that it’s too early in the lifecyle of the domain name to look at aftermarket sales:
I suspect we will need to wait a good 4 or 5 years to see the .CO extension become more widely adopted, developed, monetized and marketed by end-users — and for the after-market to ripen. In my humble opinion, most of the efforts we are seeing today to quickly flip .CO domain names on the secondary market are largely driven by speculation.
Instead, Calle wants to measure .co by “Gross Domain Productâ€:
…measuring not only the total number of .CO registrations, but the number of websites developed, and the broader value of the economic activity happening within the .CO space.
In March .Co will launch a billboard in Times Square and an outdoor advertising campaign in New York City, Austin and San Francisco. I imagine the Austin campaign will be tied into the SXSW Interactive Festival. I’ll keep my eyes open.
Joe says
They’re doing a nice job. As I’ve been saying for weeks, this .CO auction was merely a showcase of high potential domains. Unfortunately the vast majority of people aren’t aware of the existence of .CO, radio ads, O.co and GoDaddy commercials surely have done a great job, but it’s still way too little.
RKB says
Unless Juan Calle of .co registry provides actual number of registrations before and after superbowl commercial and totals now, it is all BS, PR, and hype imo.
Why are they so afraid to provide actual numbers?
What are they hiding?
So many people have asked for actual figures and no response from .co registry so far.
Andrew Allemann says
@ RKB – well, it is proprietary data to an extent. .Co has released much more than most of its peers.
What actual figures are you looking for?
mike says
That’s because .CO is garbage, and common sense would dictate that this guy’s compensation is most likely tied to the performance of .CO in one way or another. Thus it would be in his interest to hide weak statistics that would discourage people from purchasing/investing in them, since that would lower their profit.
Source: Economics/Business 101
Andrew Allemann says
“this guy’s compensation is most likely tied to the performance of .CO in one way or another”
Um, yeah. He’s the founder and CEO and has his own money and time in it. I think he wants to see it succeed 🙂
RKB says
@ Andrew
I already mentioned in my comment what I (and of course many others) have asked for on many blogs in last few weeks so that the .co investors can get better picture and hence make better decisions.
Many registries (com/net/org/info etc) release the registration figures…..I don’t know what is so proprietary except that .co may not want to share the data?
Calling it proprietary or making excuses while unleashing PR/Hype at the same time is a good way to market imo 🙂
Just my 2 cents….and of course I may be wrong.
Andrew Allemann says
@ RKB – I understand your point. From my perspective, I’m impressed that .co has such a long term vision. I don’t think I’ve seen any other “new” TLD that has even talked with that sort of vision.
Whether or not .co “succeeds” I have no idea. But it’s fascinating to watch.
David J Castello says
@Andrew
I think you know what base figure RBK is looking for 🙂
Andrew Allemann says
They announced 600k registrations. Logic would tell us they haven’t hit 700k since they haven’t announced anything.
I also give them credit for placing a counter on their site during the launch.
MS says
600k+ was the last figure i heard, And if the Russians can provide numbers and constantly (http://screencast.com/t/5J5vo9wCL), the TLD for Colombia is possibly able to do that as well.
It’s much easier to say .com is actually a typo of .co then revealing the truth possibly.
As for factual information:
Casino.com sold for $5.5 Million in 2003
Casino.co sold for $60,000 today
Business.com sold for $7 Million in 1999
Business.co sold for under $20,000 today
This should serve as a big warning sign to anyone who is considering to continue and purchase these TLD’s even though, up to date and highly likely up to forever, not one was truly ever close to .com value and .com levels of growth, on the financial level in addition to usage and other levels.
Most readers are continuing to ignore the only thing that is actually .com, and that still presents the biggest opportunity since domains existed, IDN domains (.com in other languages catering specific users who speak no English like .ком or .קום)
Andrew Allemann says
@ MS –
I don’t think Casino.co actually sold.
But yeah, I don’t think .co was created for people to “invest” in as in buying up premium generics to flip
David J Castello says
@MS
I don’t believe Casino.co sold. Didn’t hit the reserve.
David J Castello says
@Andrew
I gave Juan and Lori a lot of suggestions before they launched and I’m thrilled they’ve done so well. Any time that anyone makes a dime in this business is a good day. However, for dotCo, this July is D-Day. That’s when the first year registrations expire and it will give everyone a good idea how long the legs are on this extension.
RKB says
@ Andrew
My style is very flat and to the point, therefore sometimes I may come across like sort of rude but that is not my intention at all when I post comments….just wanted to clarify.
Now……….
I kind of find it funny/surprising that all of a sudden today .co registry became a long term visionary?
Perhaps, they have been shaken today because of a bad .co auction result at sedo for some of the best keywords?
Check out their statements up-to-yesterday and show me their visions. It is overwhelmingly PR/Hype/Marketing imo.
I think may be now they have realized how much they hyped .co, even calling .com a typo of .co 🙂
Perhaps now they are changing their tone and look visionary.
My friend you used to be like a domain detective before 🙂
I loved your style before.
Unleash the detective again 🙂
Andrew Allemann says
@ RKB – don’t have time to look it up now (I will later) but I think .co has made a number of forward looking statements. If they wanted to just pump and dump they wouldn’t have put into place many cybersquatting protections. Every time I’ve talked to Juan he’s downplayed the success to date, saying it doesn’t matter what’s happened so far if they don’t execute going forward. Gives me some confidence. (I should point out that I only own one .co domain (dnw.co) and am not currently buying domains to avoid any conflicts of interest. )
@ David – yep, the first anniversary is always a big one for any new launch. I’ll be curious how they play their cards for the renewal period.
MS says
There are warnings like:
Warning: While cooking be sure to place crust side down
(Red Barron Pizza)
No mention of Colombia in the .co about us page: http://www.opportunity.co/about/
ICANN Should start looking at wider aspects of ‘preventing confusion’ possibly.
RKB says
@ MS
I won’t be surprised if misleading statements such as calling .co (company, commerce, etc) leads to lawsuits later when investors realize they have been mislead. Again this is pure speculation.
I think you have a very valid point.
I am hoping more and more domain bloggers start questioning the domaining companies a little harder….it will serve a great purpose to benefit the domaining industry and domain investors in the long-term.
mike says
@MS
.CO by its very nature is confusing, it is a .COM without an M. With “likelihood of confusion” being the fundamental basis of trademark law, I personally take their comments about preventing confusion with a grain of salt.
Also, with the recent Sedo auction … why is everyone ignoring the obvious – Sedo is notorious for bids being made and sales never going through. Why is everyone so quick to say XYZ.CO sold for $$$$ just because a bid was placed ? Foolish in my opinion. Every domainer knows the deal- a sale is only a sale when it is consummated… It will take time to see if any of those actually go through, and that’s only if Sedo decides to report that a sale didn’t actually go through despite a bid being placed (which I doubt they would want to do….)
Alan says
@ MS
I won’t be surprised if misleading statements such as calling .co (company, commerce, etc) leads to lawsuits later when investors realize they have been mislead. Again this is pure speculation.
Excellent point, I couldn’t agree more. I guess a ccTLD wouldn’t attract as many buyers as “company” and “commerce”. As for the 35X increase in registration, don’t forget that the price of .co’s dropped to as low as $7.49 with GoDaddy and Name.com
Andrew Allemann says
It concerns me that we’re talking about “investors” here. It shows how narrow minded we domainers are. If a TLD only gets investors to buy its domains, it is destined to fail.
Adam says
The .co is misleading and not many will renew more than a handful. The ones that get renewed are getting typo traffic. Go Daddy is only hot for this cause they can sell domains for $24 instead of the poor .com at $7. Domainers that buy into this are looking for a pipe dream that like .mobi, .tel and .info will never come.
RKB says
“It concerns me that we’re talking about “investors” here. It shows how narrow minded we domainers are. If a TLD only gets investors to buy its domains, it is destined to fail.”
@ Andrew
It doesn’t matter what you call them (speculators, domainers, end users, investors), they all invested their money in .co
Now why this piece comes more like PR/Hype from .co:
————————–
Calle says that sales on Super Bowl Sunday were 35 times as much as a typical Sunday. Traffic to the company’s Opportunity.co and COinternet.co web sites was up 100x.
————————–
We all know this does NOT mean much. I won’t even call it a news.
WHY?
BECAUSE: What is a typical Sunday? Let’s say on one of those previous “typical Sunday’s”, .co had 100 domain registered. So 35 times that will be 3500 domains after Superbowl commercial. right?
Now if a typical Sunday has 10 or 1000 or 10000 registrations then the math will be totally different. So there is a HUGE DIFFERENCE from 350 to 3500 to 35000 to 350000 domains registered after superbowl commercial.
NOW DO I MAKE SENSE, HERE?
Hope I am.
I am engineer cum analyst and when it comes to numbers I know I can present same set of numbers in 10 different ways such as: times, % more or less, absolute values, blah blah blah.
We should start asking some real questions from these companies or we are all doing a dis-service to the entire domaining industry and domain investors everywhere.
I won’t be surprised if feds take a serious look in future about what is going in the domain industry.
Truth needs to be told and who better than reputed blogs like yours to bring it to us.
Thanks.
RKB says
Btw, I am not claiming to know it all.
I am speaking from my past experiences:
I got burned in .mobi because I believed all the hype and crap at the times. Now I have no .mobi left: sold at fire sale or dropped in last year.
I have done same thing with .us….none left.
I only have a handful of Org/net/info…mainly org about 100 left (from almost 4000 total non-dot-com domains before).
My portfolio is now over 99% dot-Com.
I suffered losses in non-dot-com domains but I am glad finally I have cleaned my portfolio.
I am just sharing my experience with others (especially newbies) so that perhaps they can avoid getting burned badly like me.
I am doing this as a service I think to my domaining community.
Andrew Allemann says
@ RKB – thanks for sharing where your perspective comes from.
I’ll say this: DON’T SPECULATE IN ANY TLD more than you can lose. I’d say all “new” TLDs are highly speculative. In fact, Juan Calle says in the same blog post that trying to quickly flip .co domains is just speculation.
coOPPORTUNITY.co says
I believe the report, because after the SB commercial, I got a TON of traffic at coOPPORTUNITY.co – I found the extra traffic to be bothersome…
– TBC
JJ says
I haven’t seen the .co auction results but judging by these comments the numbers weren’t as impressive as a lot of the early dot mobi sales were, which has to be a concern for those who have just bought .co for a quick profit.
Ken says
It is quite unfortunate that the .CO auction didn’t sell as some thought it would. But I don’t believe the auction really meant the downfall of the .CO… that’s just killing the domain with so much negativity on its course of life. If you ask me, the reserves were pretty high to begin with considering that it is very new and less than a year old.
I’m thinking maybe MM initially priced the domains too high to either keep the domains for a more valued future, or sell the domains quickly for its perceived value in the coming years ahead.
Despite the results of the auction, it’s still a nice promotional gig for the extension. Plus it’s nice to see Calle still pulling some strings to keep the ball rolling in promoting the .CO
Just my thoughts 🙂
Grizzle says
Nice to see ///
Juan’s still got his hand up your arse
Andrew
I DARE YOU TO POST THIS,
OR A YOU THE SAME OLD FASCIST!
Steve M says
” … how long the legs are on this extension.”
How right you are, David.
And because I can see the future, I can let everyone know that .co’s legs are those of … of … of … an ant.
As bad as the Sedo .co auction was (sorry “many will sell for 100k+!” hypists), this was actually .co’s high-water mark.
It’s all down hill from here.
Adam says
“He notes that they could easily boost the number of domains registered by dropping the price to $1.99.”
While you will sell more .CO domains, you will devalue it in the same. If the goal is to setup for the long haul, there are better methods of selling the .CO value. Anyone can sell something that is cheap and it won’t attract the target audience (COmpanies, COporations, etc).
Joe says
@Adam
Unfortunately many naysayers complain about the “low” number of .CO registrations. So if .CO domains are at $25 each, they say nobody wants them and proof is there are “only” 600K of them, if they were at $1.99 each and there were millions of them, they would say the number is artificially inflated.
Just like it happened with the recent Sedo auction: since the highest selling domain was Music.CO for “just” $30K, they say it’s a worthless extension (not considering that these are normal prices for a new and unproven extension), if all .CO’s were bought for six figures by domain investors, they would say it’s a huge bubble waiting to burst.
Andrew Allemann says
@ Joe:
You write “not considering that these are normal prices for a new and unproven extension”
I’d actually argue $30k for any domain in a “new” extension is actually very high. When there are hundreds of new extensions in a couple years, most of them would *love* to have a $30k sale.
Joe says
@Andrew
Agreed. $30k is actually an important amount of money, especially considering the extension is still pretty much unheard of among the general public. Unlike past TLD launches, I’ve noticed that buyers are now more cautious and savvier so, as I said, I find the auction results in line with the current market of .CO
Joe says
@Andrew
According to COInternet, there’s an upcoming event in Austin during which .CO billboards will be affixed all over the city. Could you post some pictures when they are available?
http://www.cointernet.co/blog/co-has-lift
Andrew Allemann says
@ Joe – yes. this will coincide with SXSW. I’m on it.