.me Dot ME is gaining notorious reputation now.

DubDubDubDot said:

One thing about this forum, it's always the same handful of people involved in the pumping of lagging extensions. .tel, .mobi, .me, .ws, .sucks... they are all winning lottery tickets.

Click to expand...

And the usual suspects slagging them. :bah:

.com .com baah baah ........cant tell if i can hear sheep or what ?

In case you haven't figured it out people are typing in their own cctld these days

startingabusiness.me

evirtual1 said:

In case you haven't figured it out people are typing in their own cctld these days

Click to expand...

As liver of Portugal and Italy, i can tell you it's almost right. Now i live in Italy and working as and with web designers, i often talk about internet and domain names with collegues or even with clients. I have noticed people only trust in .it extension and more generally (but not always) in the 3 generic ones, .com, .net and .org .
All the others (even .info) look at them as spam or crappy or unknown things.

In Portugal the generic ones have more importance as well as .pt and .com.br, all the others (esp. ccTLDs except for .fr, .es and .de) are completely unknown and not considered at all.
I'm pretty sure if there would be traffic statistics country by country, you will see there are very close to 0 traffic from Portugal to ccTLDs.

Not sure if this happens in other big european countries like France or UK or Germany.

I think .me has a big future and will eventually (5-10 years) become one of the four top extensions within the us (along with .com, .org, and .info). Globally, it will also be prominent, though behind the major cctlds.

In addition to its value as a hack, I think .me is unique in that it is the best extension to represent personalization of a website. As more and more commerce takes place on the internet, people will want more specialized services so that they are not wasting time looking through things (products, ads, etc.) that are targeted at the masses. For instance, it is somewhat easy to imagine a domain like rome.me being a tourist site where one types in their interests and an engine generates a suitable itinerary for the person. Similarly, a website like sony.me could be a portal in which people could customize sony products for themselves.

I don't have much invested in .me, but I think those that do will reap great rewards. Obviously, it is somewhat speculative, but .me, in my opinion, has more potential than almost all other new extensions.

I still can't look past the "all about me" identity the name gives off. It's just to personal of an extension for me to look at from a business perspective. Definitely the best extension for a personal site or a redirect to your blog/facebook/twitter/myspace page.

I actually think .us would work better for community/social networks, as it has that "we include everyone" feeling the word "us" gives off.

I definitely feel .me will stand the test of time, unlike .tel/.name/.mobi.

evirtual1 said:

In case you haven't figured it out people are typing in their own cctld these days

Click to expand...

Of course, but how many people in Montenegro do type in .me ?
Montenegro has 700,000 inhabitants, that's not what I would call a huge local market. .me does not compare to other, mature European ccTLDs.
Most European nations extensively use their own ccTLD while .me is a vanity extension that mostly gets use outside Montenegro.

bidmaniac32 said:

I think .me has a big future and will eventually (5-10 years) become one of the four top extensions within the us (along with .com, .org, and .info). Globally, it will also be prominent, though behind the major cctlds.

In addition to its value as a hack, I think .me is unique in that it is the best extension to represent personalization of a website. As more and more commerce takes place on the internet, people will want more specialized services so that they are not wasting time looking through things (products, ads, etc.) that are targeted at the masses. For instance, it is somewhat easy to imagine a domain like rome.me being a tourist site where one types in their interests and an engine generates a suitable itinerary for the person. Similarly, a website like sony.me could be a portal in which people could customize sony products for themselves.

I don't have much invested in .me, but I think those that do will reap great rewards. Obviously, it is somewhat speculative, but .me, in my opinion, has more potential than almost all other new extensions.

Click to expand...

I think the opposite: .me is too limiting and won't ever become a major player. And sony.me is neophilia and nothing more IMO. Even if the big/somewhat big companies all start using .me, there will be 100-500 or so such sites compared to a few million websites that don't and never will even consider using the extension.

.me is a vanity domain and nothing more. It will NEVER take off. Ever.

Archangel said:

.me is a vanity domain and nothing more. It will NEVER take off. Ever.

Click to expand...

Just curious: what do you think about the move from Wordpress to use wp.me?

It goes by what I was discussing. WP is a social kinda service so it matches wp.me well enough. But that doesn't make .me any stronger.

tata668 said:

Just curious: what do you think about the move from Wordpress to use wp.me?

Click to expand...

tata668 said:

Just curious: what do you think about the move from Wordpress to use wp.me?

Click to expand...

It redirects to http://wordpress.com/

matrigaldo said:

As liver of Portugal and Italy, i can tell you it's almost right. Now i live in Italy and working as and with web designers, i often talk about internet and domain names with collegues or even with clients. I have noticed people only trust in .it extension and more generally (but not always) in the 3 generic ones, .com, .net and .org .
All the others (even .info) look at them as spam or crappy or unknown things.

In Portugal the generic ones have more importance as well as .pt and .com.br, all the others (esp. ccTLDs except for .fr, .es and .de) are completely unknown and not considered at all.
I'm pretty sure if there would be traffic statistics country by country, you will see there are very close to 0 traffic from Portugal to ccTLDs.

Not sure if this happens in other big european countries like France or UK or Germany.

Click to expand...

Yes, it does - the trust in ccTLDs in the homeland (native country) is pretty much a given. We've seen it here in Canada with .ca - so much so that there are a significant number of .ca active sites (not parking) that don't even bother to register the .com (or .net/org/info)...

The relevance of .com for residents of countries with an active ccTLD is even less since the major search engines (Google/Bing/Yahoo) adapt their search experience to that of the visitor using geolocation or opt-in preferences for their countries. In these latter cases, default keyword searches will not revert to the .com name as it was (much to the joy of parking domainers) way back in the old days until mid 2008.

bidmaniac32 said:

I think .me has a big future and will eventually (5-10 years) become one of the four top extensions within the us (along with .com, .org, and .info). Globally, it will also be prominent, though behind the major cctlds.

Click to expand...

I disagree about the potential of .me with regards to the 4 top extensions... but which metric did you use for the top other 3 names? (org/com/info).... where is .net? Me thinks that .net is far higher (real world value) than many .org and .info names (depending on the industry sector, of course)...

All my $0.02 - YMMV

Rob

I think the order will be cctld , .com and all the rest including .me, .tv right up there as time goes by as the internet expands into various directions

matrigaldo said:

Like every massive advertised launch of new extension, it has generated some excitement between domainers during the first months, but it happens with every new extension, it's happening now with .im and .cm, it happened with .tel or .pro and lot of crappy extensions.

Click to expand...

Why are you including .pro in this statement? .pro never had a period where it was hyped and generated excitement among domainers, it's restricted so domainers aren't eligible to register it. It had 6,500 registrations for 3-4 years, the eligibility rules were extended to all professions and countries in September 2008, and since then total registrations have risen sixfold to 38,400. Domainers still can't register .pro, there has never been a proper landrush or any advertising, it's harder to register now than it was when Encirca operated a proxy registration service.

.pro is a slow burner, it hasn't followed the boom and slow progress path of .mobi, .asia, and .me. .pro is attractive to a small group of professionally qualified domainer developers who appreciate it's branding qualities, they are lawyers and accountants who understand the significance of the 15,444 US trademarks that include the word Pro and the little tm next to NamesPros at the top of this page. .pro is nothing like .im or .cm, or .tel or .me. It's a gTLD, it's restricted, it's geo-neutral for SEO, it's never been hyped, it's stunningly beautiful, and you couldn't register one even if you wanted to.:hehe:

akcampbell said:

Why are you including .pro in this statement?[...]

Click to expand...

We have already had this discussion on another thread.

If i didn't believe you were a fanatic, now i do.
You are defending this ideal of the .pro as a beautiful extension like a religious fanatic.

No offense, it's just my thought. I wouldn't defend the .com as well as you defend the .pro.


Well, either you are a fanatic or just you don't like me :imho::hehe:

I have an interest in .pro, just as you have an interest in talking down alternative extensions. .com doesn't need defending which is probably why you wouldn't bother. If you are going to criticise .pro at least get your facts right. You said "Like every massive advertised launch of new extension" and included .pro. That's not how it was at all, .pro is restricted, is has never been advertised, it's nothing like .tel, .me, .asia, and .mobi in that respect. There was no massive boom in domainer interest at any point. If I'm a fanatic for setting the record straight, fine, I would describe myself as an enthusiast.

I agree with you except one thing: .pro isn't beautiful in my eyes. It's as ugly as .name. But to each his own.

akcampbell said:

I have an interest in .pro, just as you have an interest in talking down alternative extensions. .com doesn't need defending which is probably why you wouldn't bother. If you are going to criticise .pro at least get your facts right. You said "Like every massive advertised launch of new extension" and included .pro. That's not how it was at all, .pro is restricted, is has never been advertised, it's nothing like .tel, .me, .asia, and .mobi in that respect. There was no massive boom in domainer interest at any point. If I'm a fanatic for setting the record straight, fine, I would describe myself as an enthusiast.

Click to expand...

Archangel said:

I agree with you except one thing: .pro isn't beautiful in my eyes. It's as ugly as .name. But to each his own.

Click to expand...

If you don't think domains like Football.pro, Golf.pro, Poker.pro, Office.pro, Game.pro, Studio.pro etc are beautiful you have no sense of branding aesthetics. Alternative extensions live and die according to the neatness of the fit between the keyword and extension. Pro provides fantastic fit with keywords in multiple sectors, there are so many Pro angles; sport, hobbies, software, gadgets, recruitment, training etc.

There are more trademarks with Pro in than virtually all other alternative extension text strings put together. If Pro was ugly 1,000's of businesses wouldn't use it as a branding prefix and suffix. This site wouldn't be called NamePros. There wouldn't be 921,000 Google indexed pages ending "pro.com" becuase there would be no point adding Pro after a keyword. Sedo wouldn't have called it's premium parking service Sedo Pro and so on.

Pro conveys what every business in this world is trying to make their customers believe, that their product or service is a cut above what somebody else is offering. Pro premium brands, it adds credibility and authority. Pros do the job well, they have specialist skills. Pro products are better than standard ones.

If you think the branding mark Pro is ugly, why do you think 15,444 businesses in the US have it in their trademark? Surely, business wouldn't spend thousands of dollars trademarking an ugly mark? Think of any domaining keyword, then type "KeywordPro" into Google, you will find sites called KeywordPro.extension. Why do you think somebody shoe horned the Pro in there? Was it an accident?

Dude, take a cold shower and read a nice book lol You tend to freak out when ppl have negative things to say about your Jesus Christ, the Almighty .pro. I said it looks ugly. Branding aesthetics have nothing to do with it, only PREFERENCE. Calm down and let people have their opinion.

BTW .pro looks really nice with certain keywords ie poker but for everything else, they look pretty stupid to me, just like Iraq.us (I'm not talking about its usage, just that it looks dumb).

akcampbell said:

If you don't think domains like Football.pro, Golf.pro, Poker.pro, Office.pro, Game.pro, Studio.pro etc are beautiful you have no sense of branding aesthetics.

Click to expand...

Yeah, you get way too defensive over .PRO then always respond with the same points about Pro being taken in a bunch of trademarks, which is totally irrelevant to the extension which few care about.

Brad

Archangel said:

Dude, take a cold shower and read a nice book lol You tend to freak out when ppl have negative things to say about your Jesus Christ, the Almighty .pro. I said it looks ugly. Branding aesthetics have nothing to do with it, only PREFERENCE. Calm down and let people have their opinion.

BTW .pro looks really nice with certain keywords ie poker but for everything else, they look pretty stupid to me, just like Iraq.us (I'm not talking about its usage, just that it looks dumb).

Click to expand...

Archangel said:

Dude, take a cold shower and read a nice book lol You tend to freak out when ppl have negative things to say about your Jesus Christ, the Almighty .pro. I said it looks ugly. Branding aesthetics have nothing to do with it, only PREFERENCE. Calm down and let people have their opinion.

Click to expand...

This is a discussion forum, expressing a view isn't "freaking out", I'm perfectly calm, if somebody has a negative view about .pro, I put across my positive view, you can put across whatever view you like, it doesn't upset me and mine shouldn't upset you, I accept other people's thoughts, I try to change their mind with stats and examples but I don't get hot and bothered like you seem to and start telling people to take a cold shower, blaspheming, using block capitals, and negative emoticons, that's childish.

bmugford said:

Yeah, you get way too defensive over .PRO then always respond with the same points about Pro being taken in a bunch of trademarks, which is totally irrelevant to the extension which few care about.

Click to expand...

It's a discussion forum, if people talk about .pro, negatively or positively, I love it. It gives me a chance to talk about .pro. Yes, I often defend it because it's taking flak, but I'm not defensive in a getting upset way. I enjoy the discussion.

Archangel said:

BTW .pro looks really nice with certain keywords ie poker but for everything else, they look pretty stupid to me, just like Iraq.us (I'm not talking about its usage, just that it looks dumb).

Click to expand...

Give me some examples of top keywords that look dumb it .pro. Iraq isn't a blockbuster keyword, and it's a difficult word to dress up because of all the baggage it carries. Give me some keywords that would sell for $1m+ in .com that look dumb in .pro.

*rolls eyes*

1.) I was simply saying I thought it looks ugly. That's it. I just gave an opinion. THEN you gave me a 7 thousand word response trying to defend it. What's worse, you admit to being defensive and trying to change minds. That itself is childish -- just give facts (without preaching them) and let ppl decide for themselves. Do you respect the human mind's ability to think for itself?

2.) This is a domain forum and that is the vast bulk of discussion here. True. But I think .pro is ugly. Don't try to change my mind. (It'd be a waste of your time doing so).

3.) Are you retarded? Or do you not get points when they are spelled out to you? What does the Iraq thing mean? What point is there? You seem to believe that all domains registered are golden, premium keywords. (I should register Bluish-Green-Butt-Pirates.com) The point you were making, along with your bitching about PRO being such a hotly TM'ed term, makes no sense.

Let's get off this topic as it's really going astray of the point of this thread.

akcampbell said:

This is a discussion forum, expressing a view isn't "freaking out", I'm perfectly calm, if somebody has a negative view about .pro, I put across my positive view, you can put across whatever view you like, it doesn't upset me and mine shouldn't upset you, I accept other people's thoughts, I try to change their mind with stats and examples but I don't get hot and bothered like you seem to and start telling people to take a cold shower, blaspheming, using block capitals, and negative emoticons, that's childish.



It's a discussion forum, if people talk about .pro, negatively or positively, I love it. It gives me a chance to talk about .pro. Yes, I often defend it because it's taking flak, but I'm not defensive in a getting upset way. I enjoy the discussion.



Give me some examples of top keywords that look dumb it .pro. Iraq isn't a blockbuster keyword, and it's a difficult word to dress up because of all the baggage it carries. Give me some keywords that would sell for $1m+ in .com that look dumb in .pro.

Click to expand...

Archangel said:

1.) I was simply saying I thought it looks ugly. That's it. I just gave an opinion. THEN you gave me a 7 thousand word response trying to defend it. What's worse, you admit to being defensive and trying to change minds. That itself is childish -- just give facts (without preaching them) and let ppl decide for themselves. Do you respect the human mind's ability to think for itself?

Click to expand...

I didn't admit to being defensive. I said I defended .pro. Trying to change somebody's mind through discussion on a forum isn't childish, the things you were doing, using block capitals, negative emoticons, blaspheming, telling me to take a cold shower, and in your most recent post asking me if I'm retarded, that's childish. That's something a 15 year old would say not a grown up.

Archangel said:

2.) This is a domain forum and that is the vast bulk of discussion here. True. But I think .pro is ugly. Don't try to change my mind. (It'd be a waste of your time doing so).

Click to expand...

If your mind is so closed to other people's views, why bother with a domain forum? If you already know it all, then any form of discussion is going to be a real headache for you.

Archangel said:

3.) Are you retarded? Or do you not get points when they are spelled out to you? What does the Iraq thing mean? What point is there? You seem to believe that all domains registered are golden, premium keywords. (I should register Bluish-Green-Butt-Pirates.com) The point you were making, along with your bitching about PRO being such a hotly TM'ed term, makes no sense.

Click to expand...

I asked you to name some blockbuster keywords in .pro that sound dumb to you. You said most sounded dumb so why can't you list some $1m+ .com keywords the don't work in .pro?

*sighs in disbelief* Hopefully a day will come when you start looking at your words for what they are. But I won't PREACH them to you since I value the simplistic concept of free-will and our ability to rationalize without another's attempts at brainwashing, as you're trying to do. This facade is getting old. If all you're going to do is hide behind a wall of pretense, then I have nothing further to say to you.

Tell your wife, Mrs Pro, I said hi.

akcampbell said:

I didn't admit to being defensive. I said I defended .pro. Trying to change somebody's mind through discussion on a forum isn't childish, the things you were doing, using block capitals, negative emoticons, blaspheming, telling me to take a cold shower, and in your most recent post asking me if I'm retarded, that's childish. That's something a 15 year old would say not a grown up.



If your mind is so closed to other people's views, why bother with a domain forum? If you already know it all, then any form of discussion is going to be a real headache for you.



I asked you to name some blockbuster keywords in .pro that sound dumb to you. You said most sounded dumb so why can't you list some $1m+ .com keywords the don't work in .pro?

Click to expand...

It is not the first time that a thread started on a different topic and ended up in a messy discussion of .pro. :lol:

Yeah, I have noticed the same thing. The ability to turn so many threads into a place to pimp .PRO is impressive.

Brad

Jawed said:

It is not the first time that a thread started on a different topic and ended up in a messy discussion of .pro. :lol:

Click to expand...