I don’t think they’ll change the world, but I don’t wish for them to fail.
I write a lot of stories about new top level domain names. Some are about the good and some are about the bad. Sometimes people read one of my positive stories and think I must be a new TLD supporter. Others read my stories about problems and challenges new TLDs will face and think I’m a new TLD hater.
So let me set the record straight: I don’t think new TLDs are going to radically change the way most people navigate the internet, nor do I hope they all go up in flames.
Let’s back up a little bit.
At one point I was against the rollout of new TLDs. That was before the program was approved and the community was still debating if and how to allow a major expansion of top level domain names.
I didn’t like the idea because I thought it could jeopardize ICANN as an institution and get it off track. I also worried that it would open up a can of worms for new and unwarranted intellectual property rights protections. In some ways this has happened, although ICANN hasn’t imploded yet.
But now that the program has been approved, hundreds of companies have applied, and domains are being added to the root, there’s no point in worrying about something that has already passed the decision point.
Now shift to today.
Do I want to see new TLDs succeed or fail?
I certainly don’t want them, or the businesses that run them, to fail. It’s not my practice of wishing that entrepreneurs’ businesses fail. I consider myself an entrepreneur. I’ve had my share of successes and failures. I spend much of my time cheering on and helping others that are trying to grow a business. I don’t understand why anyone would wish ill will on someone betting their livelihood on a venture.
The only reason I can think that someone would wish for new TLDs to fail is out of fear. If you fear that new TLDs will destroy your own livelihood, then you might hope that entrepreneurs trying to dethrone your business fail.
In the present case, that would mostly be a .com owner worrying that new TLDs will erode the value of your domains. I can certainly understand how, if you think this might happen, you will root against the success of new TLDs.
But I don’t have this fear, because I don’t think it’s going to happen. At least any time soon; at least not from this first round of new TLDs.
I don’t think the value of .com domains are going to plummet. I even think some of them will go up in value.
I agree with Frank Schilling when he says new TLD registrants, for the foreseeable future, will say to themselves “I really should get the matching .com, too.” There are some domains that I thought about letting expire this year, but decided to renew for another couple years because I think they could be helped by new TLDs that match a term in the domains.
In many ways, confusion over top level domain names could drive traffic to .com domains (or whatever is currently dominant in a particular country). It could be a boost for domain parking, which has seen a decline in the number of people typing in domain names for “direct search.”
A year or two from now, I suspect that most new TLDs will be measured in tens of thousands, not hundreds of thousands. (I’m not alone, as that’s in the business model of many registries.) Many will struggle to maintain more than 10,000 registrations. Some outliers will take off and be embraced.
Some will view this as a success, others will view it as a failure.
And if .com values are adversely affected by new TLDs? Then I’ll tip my hat to those that put up their money and sweat equity to try to disrupt the business, and I’ll find a way to make money from this changed world. I’ll especially applaud the little guys; the handful of people who have bet a substantial part of their own net worth on a highly risky business venture.
Once you remove the fear factor, you can look at new TLDs with an open mind. You can look for the opportunities. Whether you think new TLDs will succeed or fail, there’s a way to profit from their release. Right now.
So there you go. That’s what I feel about new TLDs. I hope you keep this in mind when I write about the successes, challenges, and failures of the future.
Can you share what names you saw get registered in the root in EAP day 1?
@ Robbie – Donuts hasn’t published the zone data since 1/28, and the 1/28 data didn’t have sunrise registrations in it either. So I don’t have any reliable data yet.
I don’t think anyone wants the gTLD’s to fail. I am on record as believing in will only increase the value of .com so bring it on!
But that is different than buying into it. If I think a stock is going to go down, I don’t plunge in, I wait.
Saying provocative things like “dot com is dead” is what framed this entire debate and they own that can of worms.
It was a stupid thing to say and then repeat and it was like crapping over half the people in the industry and trying to hurt their investments. That was pretty nasty!
We don’t want to hear them overstate their case when we are talking about one’s money and how to spend or invest it. So they took a self inflicted credibility hit.
Asking hard questions does not mean you wish them failure. Realizing that some will fail as will the case be in any mass start up event is simply prudent. Handicapping is what is going n and of course many don’t like that. TOO BAD!
Listen, not buying into their extensions does not mean you want them to fail, it just means there may be better options out there at this moment. Everyone will make their own choices.
I don’t think they will change the world either and one would have to buy into that to invest money there at this point in time.
I think folks just want to hear the side they want to hear and no matter how fair and balanced you try to be some just completely ignore 50% of what is said.
But if buyit.clothing is worth someone shelling out over $10,000 as was reported yesterday, well I can’t see that value in that domain and I think had they waited a few days could have gotten it for the $20 registration fee. Then of course an hour later it is on the market. I don’t the value and I can’t imagine anyone buying that domain. I must be missing something. I just don’t get it. On the face of it, looks completely worthless to me. With any domain available in that extension I can’t see buying that one unless it is a hoax.
“I don’t think they will change the world either and one would have to buy into that to invest money there at this point in time.
I don’t think they have to change the world for people to find a way to profit from them. Some of these registries will get 25k registrations and be quite profitable. There will also be some opportunities for domainers. .Me didn’t change the world, but you made money from it, right?
And if you think all new TLDs will suck but they’ll increase the value of .com, then there’s another opportunity right there…
“.Me didn’t change the world, but you made money from it, right? ”
As a matter of fact I did. Owned a 4 letter .com of no particular value. A startup registered the identical 4 letter in .me. Used it for a bit and then contacted me. Was very clear that they didn’t have the money to make it worth while to sell. Time went on and they became known enough to raise VC money. I then simply approached them and asked if they wanted to buy. Domain sold mid 5 figures approx. (Was a really difficult sale they walked away a few times).
From my experience I expect that this is what will happen with the new tld’s.
But otoh what I find is that it’s really difficult to try and sell a person who approaches you about a .com even the .net equivalent of the domain at a much lower price. They want the .com and simply don’t seem to want to part with much money for anything but that (they will of course pay reg fee for another tld).
I just have to say this about extensions..they are irrelevant to searches. I have kids in their 20’s and have asked them about .com, .info and so forth. You know what they stated? None of these kids in their generation and those that are in their early thirties care one iota about the extension. They look for the content related to what their search terms are. Then they bookmark the website to go back.
What I keep seeing here are dinosaurs who fear change! Perhaps your content is thin. These young adults are different than you and I and ARE the buying power.. They care about content …period. Not that hard to figure out.
This is not directed to you Rick or anyone in particular. I just know from speaking to my kids and their friends and they all say the same thing…dot what?
.me is a powerful extension compared to most of these. Who cares if a registry makes monet? We are domsin name investors and our job is to find and buy the best domsins at the best prices. It the strong is targeted and powerful and means something it eill have value.
Buyit.clothing compares hiw to meet.me? Hint: one is wothless. Whi cares that the registry sild it for $10k. It has no value as an investment. But they can knock their socks off looking for someone to sell it to.
Got to make sure my spam filter is on.
Iphone = lots of typos. Sorry.
There will always be a need for .com, as certain keywords you simply cannot create a .gtld extension for a few coined phrases, including trends… so it is really the matter if the public at hand will migrate to new extensions, and see them as legit, or they may see them as spammy. We are very early in this cycle, but I am guessing, anything these guys are taking in right now, will go to marketing, and that money could just burn up very quickly on deaf ears.
.com is like so yesterday…
and today. and tomorrow 😀
In your dreams – good luck hitting a bid.
Are you with TLDH?
For the record as someone who both owns domains and does consulting for startups who are looking to buy domains I am amazed at how often they ask me to look into a .somethingotherthancom
Even if I tell them “you don’t want .ly for your startup” they still, because they see other startups using them, and they haven’t been around that long (they are young) it doesn’t resonate with them. Not that they don’t believe me it’s just that they see all their friends “smoking” and not getting sick so they want to give it a try.
Of course they are a very small part of the buyers for domains but unfortunately also represent a group of people that have large amounts of “funny money” to spend on domains.
The good news is after they grow up in the end they realize they need the .com. But they are not willing to pay unlimited money for it simply because there is not as much value in their head as we might have.
that is why free comments are a dangerous habit.. i vote for introducing an iqtest right before commenting on topics like this one…
I have many things to say about this topic, but I don’t think any thing but pithy is prudent here, therefore I shall.
I’ve been reading this blog for a few months now, and can vouch for Andrew Allemann, that he has been balanced in his approach.
The question is then, being balanced is it a VICE or VIRTUE, when it comes to this debate?
Secondly, when we talk about balanced, do we mean “triangulation”, having friends on both sides of an issue, and therefore avoid hurting anyone’s feeling in the process of getting to the truth?
In my opinion, it is too late to get on the record, as of today. If you have avoided getting on the record until today, don’t bother!
We are NOW in the thick of it. It’s time for revelations; reality; actual numbers and events.
How will the end-user react to the new gTLDs? We will now know from real numbers henceforth, not speculation. They have been introduced.
So, Andrew Allemann that you have been balanced is NOT in question, as far as i am concerned, you have.
The question is “In Real-life, Is Truth balanced”? Or does Truth favor the Truth-tellers?
Out of ten trials, a truth-teller can be right 10 out of 10 times, while a false-hood peddler gets Zero out of that ten. Truth is then biased in favor of the truth-teller.
In general, I expect .com values to go up, but long, multi-word .com domains to go down in demand.
That’s a plausible scenario
It’s only my best guess, but I’m willing to adjust if the market changes. I’m not dogmatic.
Can anyone tell me by adding custom domain I lost my Seo or my old blog redirect with 301 to save my blog seo.
David de Jong Weill hit it on the head. There’ll always be those trying to hold onto the past, especially when vested interests are at stake thru existing .Com portfolios.
With a global marketplace, the figures quoted here for uptake are naive.
As Jennifer Wolfe quoted recently “There’s a pardigm shift occuring” with a “bing bang” scenario about to play out.
The geovraphic domains specifi ally should generate a particularly high uptake, with companies focusing on such benefiting accordingly.
.Com isnt dead but certainly wont be the king of the hill anymore. That monopolys about to go as the domain space is about to get much more inclusive.
mmhmm and the new gtld registries are doing this out of the goodness of their hears to advance the internet, not to milk money out of registrants for as much and as long as they can.
SEARCH ENGINES MUST BE IMPARTIAL.
THEY CAN NOT RUN GENERIC TOP LEVEL DOMAINS.
PERIOD.
A valid point, and one that I have not heard before.
However ICANN is too busy counting to care.
“SEARCH ENGINES MUST BE IMPARTIAL.
THEY CAN RUIN GENERIC TOP LEVEL DOMAINS”
….. {edited} – also true.
Neutral or not, Andrew, the sad fact is that the gtld concept is just dumb. There is no reason to put a word to the right of the dot. especially one up to 12 characters long. Doing so will only cause problems. Lots of them. We have seen a few so far. Far more are on their way. The online book company wants .Amazon — predictably, the country of Brazil objects; Lifechurch wants to control .bible, but many others disagree in theology with this missionary organization; If Apple had applied for .APP, would that have been ok? What about the other 13 APPlicants? Would a tm have given them precedent? That wouldn’t exactly be fair now would it?
What if my initials were BMW, could I apply for the extension? What if I had a BMW trademark in the category of clothing in the county of Uganda? They it would be ok? What if a trademark was for a generic word such as Apple – does that give them the right to the extension over Susan Q. Apple, an apple farmer, Mott’s Applesauce Company, or someone who wants to “keep the doctors away”?
What happens when someone wants a reasonable extension such as .CAM (for Camera) knowing that people in Boston will pronounce it like .COM and cause confusion? Or who will ensure that the .Church domain will not be assigned to a devil worship organization?
And don’t get me started on the traffic and email leakage factor – that’s gonna be painful. Have we learned nothing from Overstock’s very expensive failure in which it was estimated that 61% of traffic intending to visit O.Co was misdirected to the .Com counterpart? Luckily for Overstock, O.Com is not owned. In the cases of gtld mistypes, however, the .Com owns will collectively win the lottery.
Look, I don’t want to see anyone lose a ton of money either, but it is just painfully obvious that these are all going to fail. The idea is 18-20 years too late to be successful. And it’s not like this hasn’t been tried before. It has and with tlds that were hand selected to show the most promise. We know how that story ended. What makes gtld proponents think that the book will read differently this time around. Sadly, it won’t.
It is not a case of being nice, neutral or polite. The concept is conceptually flawed and the emperor is wearing no clothes. The truth needs to be told.
Hi again. Let’s not forget that there will be both singular and plurals adding to the chaos. So, let me get this straight — there can be .law, .laws, .legal, lawyer, .lawyers, .lawsuit, .lawsuits, .litigation, .abogado, .abogados and more? This will solve the confusion? Really — on what planet?
At a minimum of 2.5 times the price of an available .com upfront and also annually, who is going to want one? $799 upfront and also per year for .Luxury? For that matter, who is going to want to pay $25 either? Not I. And what if the sponsoring registrar decides to raise the renewal price? What if they go out of business? What if there is no public awareness push to promote the new tld’s as new options? Or what if, very realistically in my opinion, the public never accepts them as legitimate? There was supposed to be a big bang. Are we in it now? I hear nothing!
Stop the insanity now, Icann, and not accept any more applications. It is not fair to the innocent and naive applicants. I suspect it will be widely known in a few weeks that the gtld experiment has failed. The big bang will have been a big thud. Don’t get me wrong, I’m glad we tried it (yet once again). Hmm, same results as before.
For the record, I do have some .com’s, but I don’t think it ‘s a matter of agenda. So does the vast majority of gtld proponents. The right of the dot idea is truly bad, is a repeat of .mobi and it just won’t work. Hard enough to remember one side of the dot. Now you are asking me to remember both sides?
This is not new. They say the difference between a wise man and a fool is that a fool keeps trying the same exact thing, each time hoping for a different result.
As far as I am concerned the party came to a screeching halt when you reported that the Mayor of Las Vegas accidentally referred to .Vegas as Vegas.Com. Bet you coulda heard a pin drop in that auditorium. Priceless!
They also say you learn from past mistakes and the more targeted promotiinal spend and inertia of the gTLDs will drive a step chanfe in conceptual and actual acceptance of the domains.
Lessons have been learned, albeit some will still desperately cling to the notion of . Com whilst the wave of new Domains forever changes the internet landscape.
The dinosaurs need to look for the meteorite…..
Dinosaurs……
For anyone to say that new TLD’s will only make .com more valuable shows that they don’t understand the law of supply and demand, without a doubt .com will continue to be the most valuable extension, but because of all this new extensions, there will be less demand for .com which translates to diminished value for .com, so easy, but so hard for some to understand.
The argument that .com will be more valuable is because confused consumers will visit the .com domains when they mean to visit other domains.
Thanks so much for this post and discussion.
I am not a domainer but I do own about 100 names, several of which I have built sites on.
One of my recent businesses is Intown Coffee http://www.intowncoffee.com a specialty coffee subscription service.
I am creating a post http://www.intowncoffee.com/news/coffee-domain-names-are-coming to let other coffee shops and roasters be aware that they might want to by theirname.coffee
From the small business owner do you think having a new gTLD could be helpful or is it just more to protect and manage.
For me it seems like it could be cool going to 1000hills.coffee, petes.coffee verve.coffee or any coffee shop that has a .coffee extension.
Do you think .coffee or .bike names could be good for small local shops.
Also if you see anything that is wrong or could be improved in my post please let me know. I am hoping to create a useful article for business owners and those who have no idea what a top level domain is.
Thanks! — Steven
Refreshing to see another domain blogger giving his honest untainted unbia$ed take.
A few have done it in last few days, Elliot, Morgan, etc etc in addition to recent article by the DnJournal…
I missed the .com bonanza, so when this new potential goldmine arrived, I’m determined to mine into it with all the resources I still have. When I see the obtuse descriptions people think they can get away with before a .com, I’m actually rather glad I missed that particular boat. Now, with the aid of mission.guru and moneymaking.ventures, I think I have much more chance of capturing the imagination of confused surfers. Time will tell.
I’ve said this every time they release new extensions…..but I think the latest “dot whatevers” are a whole lot more about increasing ICANN fees and registrar profits than they are about actually improving the internet. They continue to trickle out new extensions with a ton of hype (buy now! before it’s too late!) that end up having no actual commercial success for anyone other than registrars(because we all know .XXX totally revolutionized the adult industry as it was hyped to).
In short, until the average American can name 5 major commercial non-dot coms (or similar TLD)….ignore the hype.
Dot com just got a lot more peasants under its rule ! Com, Net, Org and .TV.THOSE are the bluechip powerplayers. I’m really sorry that anybody would invest in their hard earned money in anything else. I’m GLAD I learned my lesson back in 2000 with Clear Channel and .cc. The Giant isn’t slayed… its not even a giant anymore as .com grew into something a bit bigger……… GRAVITY !
I come from the future, they are still lame, and uncool.
like the lawmaker trying to rap to get to the “kids”