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Interesting .CEO comments started by Paul Kedrosky

by — Uncategorized 1 Comment

Last night venture capitalist Paul Kedrosky discovered .CEO and tweeted his thoughts on it to his 275,000 followers:

paul-kedrosky

Conversation obviously followed.

One person noted:

austen

Kedrosky responded “Exactly.”

Another comment:

kedrosky-2

To which Kedrosky responded “And that exact thought had already crossed my mind.”

There are some other colorful comments. Not every commenter was a detractor of .CEO. One person kinda liked it.

In addition to the insurmountable silliness of anyone using a .CEO domain, the backers fumbled the marketing right out of the gate. These have combined to result in only 1,430 .ceo registrations.

.CEO marketing goes from silly to…

by — Uncategorized 3 Comments

New TLD not doing so well? It doesn’t suck, it’s just “limited release”.

By all measures, PeopleBrowsr’s two top level domain name launches have been flops.

.CEO has 1,244 domains in the zone file. .Best has 434.

This isn’t a huge surprise to me. .CEO launched with some silly and sexist videos. Its marketing wasn’t well executed.

That, and it’s a stupid idea for a top level domain name.

Registrars haven’t exactly rushed to carry either .CEO or .best, which are priced around $100 retail. That’s a pretty steep price tag for domains that would struggle to sell even at low price point.

So how do you spin the fact that your domains are languishing and few top registrars carry them? You call them “Limited Release”.

That’s right, these are rare domains.

Here’s a promotional email the company recently sent with the headline “Two domains your registrar doesn’t want you to know about”:

peoplebrowsr

The glass is certainly half full over at PeopleBrowsr.

.CEO: How not to market your new top level domain name

by — Domain Sales 6 Comments

.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:

ceo-examples

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.

A new TLD just canceled its landrush citing “little engagement”

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.Best says registrars suggested little benefit to holding a landrush.

The applicant for the .best top level domain name has canceled the landrush phase of its new top level domain name launch. The company says that “registrars have given us feedback that there has been very little engagement with the TLD Landrush Phase”.

Indeed, with the typical new TLD launching with fewer than 10,000 initial registrations, delaying a launch for a month or two to pick up some pricier landrush registrations might not make sense.

Donuts has landed on a good hybrid model with its Early Access Program. Although rather confusing to the typical registrant (and a pain technically for registrars), it allows the registry to pick up more revenue in a shortened landrush phase. The Early Access Program is similar to a reverse auction in which prices drop each day.

.Best may be changing course after the company’s launch of .CEO flopped. .CEO, which has always been a head-scratcher to me, still has fewer than 1,000 registrations despite rather heavy marketing efforts.

.Best has a bit broader appeal, although I consider it a “backwards” TLD: you describe things as Best Something, not Something Best.

Sunrise for .best starts on April 17th and ends on May 19th, with general availability starting on May 21st.