Schilling invests in and partners on Desktop.com.
Former domain name investor Frank Schilling, who sold his portfolio and registrar to GoDaddy this year, has partnered with Rolf Larsen on Desktop.com.
Desktop.com will make it easier for individuals and businesses to manage the growing array of web apps they use in their business. The timing couldn’t be better as companies have to quickly learn how to provision and control access to web apps for their employees who are suddenly working from home.
Larsen bought the Desktop.com domain from Idealab. He entered into a payment plan to pay for the domain over two years.
Before starting Desktop.com, Larsen was the founder of the .Global top level domain name. Afilias acquired .Global last year. Larsen also co-founded of RegistryOffice, a management system for domain name registries.
congrats guys! wish you much success!
I guess .com isn’t like AM radio any more?
“They” always come back to .COM.
Realize that DESK.TOP forwards to the .com. desk.top. That’s for promotion purpose, because nTLD GETS THE CLICKS. Gets their foot in the door! Users think “neat”.
Even desktop.com knows the power of nTLD in advertising. they own DESK.TOP – EVERY COMPANY KNOWS. They all use exacting shorteners! Why do you think? MORE CLICKS, obviously. Just wait till those parrots, whom have no *actual* experience in these matters learn the CTR of nTLD vs .com.
Get with it. Get real. One, the most important feature of a domain name is to get a customer in the door. nTLDs do that, and do that better than .com.
Oh how you mention “They” You must mean your .com heros?
Frank has done relatively nothing to promote his nTLD strings, some of the earliest and best available.
In fact, on his uni blog, he pumps .com just as he unloads his whole portfolio at the top. Sound similar?
It should, because just as he was promising not to raise prices, he did on a dozen. Mostly between 200% and 3000%. Very unreasonable. Screwing the investors and end-users which were tied down to their domains.
You like to cheer “They”, but “they” absolutely screwed the small guys. Your own hero, squash legitimate investors in domains, and you praise them!
What if .com went up 1000% +, would you expect people to praise ‘them’ too? Why such hypocrites? You enjoy people getting bent over by the multi-millionares? You must. You think it’s funny. The precedent is set. You let this slide, .org, .com…it’s coming. You let it happen. You showed ICANN that when it does happen, you will cheer and praise them.
It’s one thing that *we knew* what *could happen* (price increase), it’s another when one of the most prominent domainers LIES, telling us factually, he *will not*, to *sucker in* investors, showing him the best domains for him to claw back after some time.
Just because *you* hate nTLD doesn’t make what he did right. Frank scammed in domains bad, and icann allows him to persist. Registries can lie, break their own TOS and all, to screw the small guy! (look at .US) They did NOTHING to stop foreign registrants from destroying that. Even the WHOIS has their overseas address. Disregard for legitimate interests at EVERY LEVEL. Its only about the pocketbook of the registries and ICANN.
YOU ARE PART OF THE PROBLEM. Domainers are silent, even praising such blunder in their blind faith .com. You are misguided.
Anyone supporting frank should be ashamed. Regardless of your view of nTLD, the principle of what he did is what matters.
I think he KNOWs nTLD will become more sought in time.
He struck and clawed back while he could still get your ignorant compassion, claiming he was *losing money*…
While he surrounds himself in an echo-chamber of .com cucks, they only sing him praise! Shame shame. Shame on everyone supporting The biggest scammer and liar in domains because out of their *hatred* for nTLD.
“They”, those you praise, are trashing nTLD while the largest, most forward looking companies such as Google, Amazon, and Godaddy buy them up hand over fist!
Think about that, WHO do domainers think they are?? ‘Dead’ ‘no use’, when this is happening in your face? Yea, you must feel like a big boy saying these things while the actual largest companies in the world scramble over them…
nTLD trashers/trolls, in all their best effort to discredit nTLD (including frank in his ‘example’ of *what can happen*) are going to get a wild awakening once these registries have their nTLD ‘live and in the bag’. There will be a media frenzy promoting these. A premium portfolio will even seem ‘fashionable’.
I am inclined to follow the lead of the largest companies, where they invest, front running THEM rather then follow an entire industry that has *perhaps* $10b in aftermarket sales in all time! right MAYBE $10b…
Much of that – domainer to domainer sales! In hindsight, domainers held all the cards, and got wrecked at a game of ‘go fish’!
Meanwhile Google tweak their algos to rank EMD across span the dot, and develop their own sites to capture your traffic ‘organically’,
If you don’t think google is in charge of what happens regarding new strings, I again claim, you are blind and ignorant. No matter what ANY of us think, google can make or break these. In a BIG way.
He is not selling .click anymore?
Why does this feel like a domain investment in disguise? 😉
Always invest in .com!
Exactly!
Why not Desk.Top?
They own desk.top too.
It’s almost impossible to explain to domainers the intricacies of real use because they have no real-use data. They don’t build websites. they don’t run campaigns, they don’t seek truth. They follow and parrot along as evidenced by the 1 sentence .com pumps in this (and every other thread).
More than ever, the whole play-field shifts. You can’t see/learn the intricacies with the ‘com or die’ mindset.
Doesn’t it get old? Have they nothing to say other than pump .com? Really…it looks extremely lame. Same names, same song. These other comments are starting to look like spam, really. Like a robot pasting ‘com king’ on anything and everything. Like…really. It’s time to put up or shut up.
Let me digress. I will put a nTLD against an EMD .com and prove in practice,, right in your face what I’m talking about. I can challenge anyone even including Rick S. domains. Example his getlaidguide.com vs any many 100’s of mine (with search volume), like getlaid.guide. I warn you, they would be silly to test against my domains. My CTR though advertising will demolish it, probably by 100%!
In a sense, .com is losing it’s defacto status. Once upon a time there were no EMD that could compete with the .com version.
That is you could disregard metrics like CTR cuz you’d assume .com was the bees knees. You no longer can assume the .com will receive *most* the clicks! Right, there are other ALTERNATIVES, real threats. They *will* siphon big traffic from the ’emd .com’.
In practice, I have put up my domains against .com exacts and got way more clicks with nTLD. There is no one willing/inclined/able to put their meaningful 2word .com against a span-the-dot EMD nTLD and see the difference for their self!
I have. I have nTLD sites on all pages, page 3, page 6 – 20% CTR. That is mind blowing – a unicorn even from position #1.
See, most domainers don’t even understand while being on a page 3 ctr isn’t equal to being a #1 ctr. The #1 has major advantage. The factor limiting it page 1 is the content. The content on those sites is lacking. In other words, all the POTENTIAL in the world is there, it just needs to be built up. That isn’t the domains problem. That’s the developers problem.
HELLO! I’m here telling you. Find out for yourselves one way or another. The whole industry does not deserve to get spoon fed. I think the whole of you are clueless trolls.
Web development and advertising is BEYOND the scope of domaining. As such, the ‘real use benefits’ are invisible to this industry, as a whole.
They don’t know reality, they rely on perception, which I promise you, is changing – not to the benefit of .com!
Also, whist they use .com as home…it’s not totally the whole picture anymore!
They CAN operate on a .com but in reality the .TOP may be more valuable to them!
Imagine, if for every $1 they spend in ads, they get TWICE as many clicks promoting the desk.TOP. See? It’s not about YOUR perception. It’s about facts. What users are inclined to click…
Until you actually do controlled tests and see the CTR compared, you will never *get it*.
There is VALUE the journey (HOW THEY GET THERE), not just the destination!
If you are getting x2 the click via advertising a nTLD vs. COM you are going to crush the competition.
Like I said. comers left getting wrecked at playing “go fish”. nTLD playing ‘gin”, and domainers don’t even understand the rules. Dealt themselves out.
Every time you point to nTLD being used ‘only’ as a forward, im snicking at your ignorance. That is, *NOT KNOWING* what that exact nTLD forward IS doing for their traffic. What is it that you’re after, after all?