Some companies trade in longer .coms for shorter second level domains in other extensions.
I love watching the Chinese domain market because it is full of surprises. Recently, I read a news story that a Chinese startup changed its domain from .com to .top. That challenges the conventional wisdom of .com being the ultimate upgrade.
Cryptocurrency exchange DCPPlus was founded in 2017 (apparently in Hong Kong) and it operated from the brand-matching domain DCPPlus.com. The exchange handles multiple digital currencies including Bitcoin, Ethereum, and Litecoin. Recently, its name was shortened to simply DCP. To accompany the name change, the founders acquired DCP.top for reportedly 100,000 yuan (about $15,000) on December 6, 2019.
DCP.top has gone live and DCPPlus.com forwards visitors to the new site. Why not upgrade to DCP.com? Well, this is not possible because DCP.com is already being used by the American M&A firm District Capital Partners.
This reminds me of the company Supply whose founders pitched successfully in Shark Tank and received a $300,000 investment last year. The company then changed its domain from GetSupply.com to Supply.co. Why the change? Founder Patrick Coddou later tweeted “it will forever be worth it to not be called Get Supply anymore”. In other words, GetSupply.com misled consumers to believe the company’s name was actually “Get Supply”.
In these two cases, we can see that the founders consider the name part of a domain more important than its extension. In choosing a domain, its name is considered first, followed by its extension – and the name must match the brand.
Of course, the ultimate upgrade remains the exact match .com. Carrot founder Trevor Mauch told Domain Name Wire that people referred to his company as “On Carrot” when his company used the domain OnCarrot.com. He upgraded to Carrot.com.
The left of the dot is as important as ehat comes to the right of it.
I do hope the focus on the name part becomes a trend.
I saw at least one well financed startup using a .top domain name at CES 2020. They had a huge booth at the WestGate Exhibit building and at least a dozen personnel manning it.
Space Technology is using Space.top and it is building tech that allows electric cars to drop off their passengers at the mall entrance and then park themselves underground over an induction car battery charger.
I also read somewhere that .tech is popular too. I do hope this becomes a trend so that when I own the .com. it will become the obvious upgrade target.
CES has migrated to CES.tech
Thanks for reminding, Patrick.
I think dot tech is an excellent alternative for tech companies, io is for computer associated business,i own a few keyword dot tech domains that get excellent traffic,comparable or better then some same keyword dot com’s, all are technology specific.
So maybe there is a trend where startups really want a one-word brand. If they can’t get the .com they resort to an extension relevant to their industry. If this is true, then prefix and suffix of .com name may not be popular any more.
I hope they don’t plan to use the domain for e-mail since they can plan on loosing 25% to the .com.
I have the e-mail catch all open on a couple domains I own where large company’s own the corresponding .org and I am amazed at the sensitive info that I receive. More importantly the company is loosing time and money by not receiving the e-mail.
Email leakage is a serious but seldom unreported issue. I have the same experience so I’m convinced owning the brand-matching .com is paramount.
They are swapping one problem for another.
Spot on!
It really depends on who on the Top!!
As intended the registry .Top Do NOT waste your money.
A success example is .co when the meaning of .co changed from “Columbia” to “company” in its repositioning marketing initiatives.
This is painful and a big mistake. Even the CEO of Overstock.com discovered, O.co was a bad call because people who were trying to visit O.co were typing O.com. If this experience is typical, picking a lesser-known extension means losing visitors to your .com competitor. .Com is King and will remain forever.
The story of O.co is a very fascinating one. I still remember it. It was big news within the domain circle. Thanks Dee for reminding me of the story.