.CEO marketing is not well executed.
I’ve written before that .ceo as a standalone domain name doesn’t make sense to me. I see some potential for a network for CEOs, and the company behind .ceo has plenty of experience with social networking. But that wouldn’t be about a domain, it would be about a network.
dotCEO sent out an update on its first 30 days yesterday. It doesn’t look good and has me scratching my head even more. It seems .ceo is dropping the ball on marketing, which is exactly what their apparent prowess is.
The company has 1,023 domain registrations, although 93 of these are “promo”, which presumably means free. (I’ll give the registry a nod for mentioning that some were promotional; other registries are just inflating their numbers this way.)
The home.ceo site shows the number “3,568 Influential CEOs”, which doesn’t jive with the numbers they just put out.
Then again, the home page of home.ceo highlights six CEO profiles with lots of errors. It says Christine Jones is governor of Arizona. Five of the six examples it shows are from the domain industry. The one that isn’t gets paid to promote .ceo. Oh, and only four of the six resolve to a website. Even .CEO CEO Jodee Rich’s .ceo web address doesn’t resolve!
The emailed update shows “Hot dotCEO Domains Sold”, including LarryEllison.ceo and four other CEOs (of L’oreal, McDonalds, GoDaddy, Zoetica Media). Only the last one resolves to a site, and it’s basically a .ceo template page. (The template pages remind me a bit of .tel, honestly.) I the four big names were defensive registrations.
Under the headline “VIP CEO Identities”, the company shows four example pages like this:
This makes it appear that Larry Ellison is really on board and has created a site. After all, he was highlighted in the “Hot dotCEO Domains Sold” section. But notice that the URL below the picture is not LarryEllison.ceo. Instead, it’s one of the dotCEO’s own placeholder pages. The update seems designed to look like Larry Ellison is a supporter (or at least user) when he isn’t.
The other three examples are all owned by the registry.
I expected .CEO to run a heavy marketing blitz across social channels. It’s certainly marketing, but it seems to be falling flat.
Ok , seriously these guys boxes are just going to be filled with spam.
In order to have employee moral, you use your company email, not some supreme leader .ceo, from a corporate perspective this extension is all wrong from it’s core.
What is next .cto, .coo, .cfo?
I can’t believe how consistently amateur these guys have been.
Extensions like .CEO and .RICH really bother me, and so I don’t mind admitting a certain schadenfreude as I look at their dismal performance.
What irks me about these extensions is that they seem to appeal mainly to human vanity of the most trivial and objectionable kind. Yet, unlike other new extensions, they can’t seriously argue that they’re “for everybody” or that they enable better online communication.
.GURU isn’t my favorite, but it’s open to others to like it and register it for all sorts of purposes.
.PLUMBING isn’t for everybody; it’s for plumbers. But it can at least make the claim that helps plumbers identify themselves with an affordable domain.
.شبكة may or may not succeed. But its intention seems to be to help communication.
.CEO? If CEOs had problems communicating to employees or share holders, then this isn’t the way to fix those problems. These CEOs have most definitely NOT been seeking some cheap domain alternative for personal pages. So, at best, .CEO allows egotistical employees a chance to elevate themselves above their employees … or for posers to declare their own pretenses.
Of course, I’m not saying that CEOs who have accepted a .CEO domain under the influence of this registry necessarily arrogant people. CEOs don’t understand domains and were handed some freebies. Their choice to accept them isn’t really meaningful in any way.
Well we are pleased that we don’t have .CEO names.
But we do have :
taxfree.center
lowbudget.holiday
schiphol.international
webshoptickets.com
renting.cheap
borrow.cheap
And many many more.
http://www.helemaalgeniaal.nl
Greets,
Erwin van der Ploeg
you should probably have spamming.ceo
The .CEO registry should rebrand to .CO2 and let the suffocation begin. How could one register a .CEO domain only to be promoted to a higher position like President? [breathing from a paper bag]