Death change in domains!

[Chill]

THIS COULD MEAN BANKRUPTCY FOR TONS OF DOMAINERS AND A TON MORE COMPETITION ONLINE!

NEW YORK — Amazon.com wants ".joy," Google wants ".love" and L'Oreal wants ".beauty."

Big brands are behind hundreds of proposals for new Internet addresses, including scores for generic terms such as "cruise," ".kids" and ".tires."

If approved, Amazon could use ".author" in an attempt to dominate online bookselling, while Google could use ".love" to collect registration fees from its rivals.

Amazon and Google also are vying for ".app" and ".music," while the wine company Gallo Vineyards Inc. wants ".barefoot."

It's all part of the largest expansion of the Internet address system since its creation in the 1980s, a process likely to cause headaches for some companies while creating vast opportunities for others.

The organization in charge of Internet addresses, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, announced the proposals for Internet suffixes Wednesday. A suffix is the ".com" part in a domain name.

The bids now go through a review that could take months or years. Up to 1,000 suffixes could be added each year.

There were 1,930 proposals for 1,409 different suffixes. The bulk of proposals that met the May 30 deadline came from North America and Europe. About 100 were for suffixes in non-English characters, including Chinese, Arabic and Thai.

From a technical standpoint, the names let Internet-connected computers know where to send email and locate websites. But they've come to mean much more. For Amazon.com Inc., for instance, the domain name is the heart of the company, not just an address.


A new suffix could be used to identify sites that have a certain level of security protection. It could be used to create online neighborhoods of businesses affiliated with a geographic area or an industry. French cosmetics giant L'Oreal, for instance, proposed ".beauty" as a home for beauty products and general information on personal beauty.

"The Internet is about to change forever," ICANN CEO Rod Beckstrom declared. "We're standing at the cusp of a new era of online innovation, innovation that means new businesses, new marketing tools, new jobs, new ways to link communities and share information."

But there's a question of how useful the new names will be. Alternatives to ".com" introduced over the past decade have had mixed success. These days, Internet users often find websites not by typing in the address but by using a search engine. And with mobile devices getting more popular, people are using apps to bypass Web browsers entirely.

Many businesses worry that they'll have to police the Internet for addresses that misuse their brands, in many cases paying to register names simply to keep them away from others. It was one thing having some 300 suffixes; it's another to have thousands.

"One thing that's going to occur is a lot of money is going to get sucked out of the ecosystem," said Lauren Weinstein, co-founder of People For Internet Responsibility and a strong critic of ICANN. "The cost is billions and billions of dollars with no value returned to people and an enormous capacity for confusion."

One worry is that an expansion will mean more addresses available to scam artists who use similar-sounding names such as "Amazom" rather than "Amazon" to trick people into giving passwords and credit card information.

The public now has 60 days to comment on the proposals. There's also a seven-month window for filing objections, including claims of trademark violation.

Of the 1,930 proposals, 1,179 were unique and 751 were for 230 different suffixes. ICANN will hold an auction if competing bidders cannot reach a compromise. Most of the duplicate bids were for generic names, though the Guardian newspaper and The Guardian Life Insurance Co. both sought ".guardian."

Bidders had to pay $185,000 per proposal. If approved, each suffix would cost at least $25,000 a year to maintain, with a 10-year commitment required. By comparison, a personal address with a common suffix such as ".com" usually costs less than $10 a year.

ICANN has received some $350 million in application fees. The money will be used to set up the system, review applications and make sure parties do what they have promised once the suffix is operational. Some of the money will be set aside to cover potential lawsuits from unsuccessful applicants and others.

Some of the proposals are for suffixes to be reserved for in-house use. Yahoo Inc. and Microsoft Corp., for instance, plan to restrict ".yahoo and ".microsoft" to their sites or affiliates, while keeping their current names under ".com." If Google Inc. wins its bid for ".search," the search leader won't let rivals use it.

But there are hundreds of proposals for generic names that the public would be able to buy names under – for $10 or thousands depending on the suffix. Some are coming from entrepreneurs or businesses that specialize in domain names.

Others are from big technology companies. That means Google, for instance, could charge its fiercest rivals for rights to "Microsoft.love," "Facebook.love" and "Apple.love." Google declined comment.

Amazon has bids for 76 names, many related to businesses the online bookseller now dominates or might want to. Besides ".book" and ".author," Amazon is seeking ".joy."

That worries Stephen Ewart, marketing manager of Names.co.uk, a domain name reseller that stands to gain from registrations under new suffixes, including ".joy" if it is approved.

"Once you own these spaces, you can write your own terms and conditions," he says. "Big brands can decide who can be there and decide what can be put in that space. It's a bit cynical to think someone can be locked out of joy."

"Do we want the likes of Amazon owning joy?" he asks.

Amazon declined comment.

Amazon and Google are among 13 bidders for ".app." Both companies operate stores for distributing apps for mobile devices running Google's Android system. That could shut out Apple Inc. and its rival iPhone and iPad devices.

While Google applied for 101 suffixes, Apple sought only one, ".apple." EBay Inc. and Facebook Inc. didn't propose for any. It was Amazon that bid for ".like" – the button on Facebook that lets users recommend links and brands to friends.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/...mong-suf_n_1592839.html?utm_hp_ref=technology

 

[MeanerDomainer]

The more turds are spray painted gold color and marketed with the slogan "sorta kinda like gold, but much cheaper", the more valuable real gold becomes.

 

[JB Lions]

"I suspect some will give it a go and push their .brand out to consumers and some will succeed and pave the way for others. .Brand may soon after be the status symbol of major companies and the more that follow the lead the more the public "gets it" and only the small guys still use .com vs their own .brand. Times are changing."

So you suspect something like Dell.com going with something.dell? They're going to retrain millions and millions of people already familiar with it, change all their marketing, more millions etc. And dell.com is pretty short, the something.dell would probably end up being longer. Spend all that money and introduce confusion. There's just no logic in that.

This isn't for current successful companies. Nobody is going to even risk trying that. This will be an interesting thread to bump years down the road.

I would love for somebody to actually post a benefit of doing this. A company gets what out of this.

They already have their .com. They've already spent millions of dollars in marketing. People already know it and so on. They would change because.......... What? There is no reason to, not one.

 

[scandiman]

"I suspect some will give it a go and push their .brand out to consumers and some will succeed and pave the way for others. .Brand may soon after be the status symbol of major companies and the more that follow the lead the more the public "gets it" and only the small guys still use .com vs their own .brand. Times are changing."

So you suspect something like Dell.com going with something.dell? They're going to retrain millions and millions of people already familiar with it, change all their marketing, more millions etc. And dell.com is pretty short, the something.dell would probably end up being longer. Spend all that money and introduce confusion. There's just no logic in that.

This isn't for current successful companies. Nobody is going to even risk trying that. This will be an interesting thread to bump years down the road.

I would love for somebody to actually post a benefit of doing this. A company gets what out of this.

They already have their .com. They've already spent millions of dollars in marketing. People already know it and so on. They would change because.......... What? There is no reason to, not one.

If it's so worthless why have hundreds of large brands spent upwards of $200k each to buy their own .brand? We shall see what they do with them, time will tell

 

[carob]

I agree with Scandiman's point that .brand may become a status indicator with not-.brand domains being a poor man's alternative for companies. But generic terms will still make sense for selling things, unless of course Google continues scaring people off EMD names.

But here is an interesting thought: how does a member of the public do a typein for .brand? What would you type? info.brand? home.brand? com.brand? Or will Google redirect a search for a keyword to .keyword?

People often assume the most likely active email address for a domain is info@, so if they assume something similar for .brand domain homepages info.com or home.com will get a nice stream of typeins. Localhost.com is a nice parking page LOL.

 

[ecalc]

Marina del Rey CA - July 17, 2012

ICANN today announced a major initiative to grow public awareness of new TLDs. ICANN's board approved a plan to spend their entire FY 2013 marketing budget to license the Pleasure Barons 1989 Beat Generation to promote new TLDs. "This will be bigger than mobi. It's a paradigm shift, believe me. I like my women short, I like my women tall, and that's about the only thing I really dig at all" said an ICANN spokesperson.

[ame]http://youtu.be/iPEookpOZS8[/ame]

 

[JB Lions]

"But here is an interesting thought: how does a member of the public do a typein for .brand? What would you type? info.brand? home.brand? com.brand?"

There isn't one better. Somebody come up with one, let's put our marketing hats on. Let's take Dell.

Dell.com seems pretty easy to remember to me. So what, store.dell, shop.dell. By default, most of the new names will be longer since .com is only 3 letters. What is 3 letters or less that you can put before the .brand? There are all kinds of angles you can hit this at where it falls apart. This is one, besides the ones already mentioned in this thread. All you have to do is play the scenario thru. Pick a well known .com and pretend you're going to try to rebrand on a .brand. Think of all the things you're going to have to do, the money that will have to be spent, the confusion from people already familiar with your .com etc. Or you can just leave what's working already alone. One of those makes sense. Dell.com works just fine, no reason to fiddle with it.

 

[Domagon]

In most browsers, typing in just the TLD itself will not work.

The results seem to be all over the place with some browsers redirecting to a default TLD (ie. com and/or others depending on one's language / country settings) while some other browsers returning an error and/or search page.

In Firefox (at least in very old versions, such as 3.6.28, which I still run), following the TLD with a dot tends to alter the behavior allowing TLDs that have been setup with wildcarding (.TV and .VA are two examples) to resolve in the manner many domainers would expect. However, leave out the trailing dot and the behavior reverts back to what I explained in the preceding paragraph.

Bottom line, how web browsers and other software (ie. email) and devices (ie. home routers) handle TLDs lacking a machine name (ie. www, home, mail, etc.) or 2nd level domain), as of now, is highly unpredictable and very inconsistent even within the same operating environment.

The upshot being that many people, even if they're well aware of TLD only domains, may not be able to effectively utilize them without much hassle...

And people less aware will have even more trouble wondering whether to type www. in front and/or .com (and/or their default ccTLD)... even leaving out the http:// part, which most people neglect to include, will be problematic in many software programs that try to guess what's a valid url and not.

Most of the above issues with world famous branded vanity TLDs won't be an issue at all. As counter-intuitive as it seems, imho, for famous brandables, vanity TLDs make a lot of sense - economically worthwhile even despite the 6-figure expense.

However, for generic TLDs, the above explained issues will be major stumbling blocks; most people will be even more confused than before. And even more people will simply trust their browser's search to figure it all out - Google, Bing, etc are far better than most people at determining the "correct" url to reach a particular site.

 

[scandiman]

I agree with Scandiman's point that .brand may become a status indicator with not-.brand domains being a poor man's alternative for companies. But generic terms will still make sense for selling things, unless of course Google continues scaring people off EMD names.

But here is an interesting thought: how does a member of the public do a typein for .brand? What would you type? info.brand? home.brand? com.brand? Or will Google redirect a search for a keyword to .keyword?

Similar debates raged regarding .mobi and mobile webpage naming conventions... Brand.mobi vs m.brand.com vs auto detection/redirection vs some other subdomain or sub directory. Thing is it all coexists and will for quite some time to come because they all work. Companies will deploy their .brands in ways that make sense for their business models. Some may sell/offer domains as part of community membership like facebook, some may use them as solid indicators of security like financial institutions, we'll see. Point is that it all can work, no standard need exist. Home.brand is 1 character longer than brand.com ...BFD. Nobody cares about that beyond domainers making silly arguments. But a corps legal/IP/web depts absolutely love having ultimate control over their webspace, no more concerns over accidental drops, no more registrars or registries to deal with that can possibly ruin their web presence through some dumb mistake or inappropriate response to legal claims or govt intimidation. Its just them and ICANN now, whole new paradigm and I expect some will make heavy use of this new level of control and autonomy.

---------- Post added at 03:01 PM ---------- Previous post was at 02:54 PM ----------

Dell.com works just fine, no reason to fiddle with it.

When your business is crippled after your domain.com is seized by the govt without due process through the registrar and/or registry (as has happened in the recent past) you may change your outlook on this.

 

[mjnels]

curious how many of the uncontested applications will get approved.. the outcome in this first round could somewhat indicate how many future applicants there are since its 185K a pop to even try.. unless they have more money than god - like google.

also bet ICANN will lower the application fee once a lot of the main keywords are gone. maybe in the year 2050 you'll be able to register .dsjsdafjre for $8.95 - or $7.16 with your 20% off coupon. :D

 

[JB Lions]

"When your business is crippled after your domain.com is seized by the govt without due process through the registrar and/or registry (as has happened in the recent past) you may change your outlook on this."

You mean the business of illegal downloads/copyright infringement? Because I've never heard of a merchant/real business having this issue.

 

[scandiman]

"When your business is crippled after your domain.com is seized by the govt without due process through the registrar and/or registry (as has happened in the recent past) you may change your outlook on this."

You mean the business of illegal downloads/copyright infringement? Because I've never heard of a merchant/real business having this issue.

This isn't the place to discuss the merits of the seizures, the point is the lack of a conviction before seizure and the precedent that resulted. Much easier to stand up to an over-zealous govt action when you're the registrant, registrar and registry.

 

[bmugford]

This isn't the place to discuss the merits of the seizures, the point is the lack of a conviction before seizure and the precedent that resulted. Much easier to stand up to an over-zealous govt action when you're the registrant, registrar and registry.

Yeah, and as the registrant what happens when the registry is losing money and goes out of business or is sold and the new registry owner has different plans for it?

If the registry is going under who is going to take on a money loser? Is ICANN willing to guarantee new strings will never cease to exist?

What if an entire registry is sold and the new owners have different plans for the domains. What is to stop them from just seizing domains or to put ridiculous renewal prices on them?

Brad

 

[domainhacks-931385]

"When your business is crippled after your domain.com is seized by the govt without due process through the registrar and/or registry (as has happened in the recent past) you may change your outlook on this."

You mean the business of illegal downloads/copyright infringement? Because I've never heard of a merchant/real business having this issue.

try bodog.com
100% legit betting business. .com seized.

 

[JB Lions]

try bodog.com
100% legit betting business. .com seized.

I really wish online sports/casino gambling was legal in this country but it's not, it was seized for "on grounds of illegal gambling and money laundering"

That's not legal, sorry. Plus as the owner of Bodog said "We are only currently doing brand licensing deals outside the U.S., so this domain had no place in any of our current plans.” At the time of the seizure, there was no business happening on the domain - "The Bodog brand exited the U.S. market in mid-December."

 

[Domagon]

try bodog.com
100% legit betting business. .com seized.

How would having a vanity TLD prevent seizure by the U.S. government (DHS in the case of bodog.com) verses a 2nd level domain?

ICANN, last I checked, is under U.S. jurisdiction (still under contract by the U.S. Dept of Commerce or did that change?) and hence it's little to no hassle for U.S. authorities to seize an entire vanity TLD verses a 2nd level domain.

Way back in the early ICANN days, it was widely believed, and seemed to be true for awhile, that legal disputes regarding .COMs and .NETs, in particular, including seizures would at the registrar level only with the registry staying out of it. Furthermore, from what I recall, VeriSign was vocal that they were simply the registry and not responsible for legal issues regarding individual domains.

Anyways, somewhere along the line (sure someone here can fill in the blanks), things changed and VeriSign has been directly involved assisting in the seizing of numerous domains.

Point is, in my layman's view, vanity TLDs seemingly offer no additional protection from government seizure, though will offer additional protection from private sanctions (ie. registrar suspending a domain for alleged spam, obscene content, by error, etc).

 

[scandiman]

Yeah, and as the registrant what happens when the registry is losing money and goes out of business or is sold and the new registry owner has different plans for it?

If the registry is going under who is going to take on a money loser? Is ICANN willing to guarantee new strings will never cease to exist?

What if an entire registry is sold and the new owners have different plans for the domains. What is to stop them from just seizing domains or to put ridiculous renewal prices on them?

Brad

That could happen to .com just the same as others that exist today or appear as a result from this new application process, though personally the ones I'd be most concerned with are ccTLDs which ultimately are at the mercy of the govt of its country.

 

[scandiman]

How would having a vanity TLD prevent seizure by the U.S. government (DHS in the case of bodog.com) verses a 2nd level domain?

ICANN, last I checked, is under U.S. jurisdiction (still under contract by the U.S. Dept of Commerce or did that change?) and hence it's little to no hassle for U.S. authorities to seize an entire vanity TLD verses a 2nd level domain.

Way back in the early ICANN days, it was widely believed, and seemed to be true for awhile, that legal disputes regarding .COMs and .NETs, in particular, including seizures would at the registrar level only with the registry staying out of it. Furthermore, from what I recall, VeriSign was vocal that they were simply the registry and not responsible for legal issues regarding individual domains.

Anyways, somewhere along the line (sure someone here can fill in the blanks), things changed and VeriSign has been directly involved assisting in the seizing of numerous domains.

Point is, in my layman's view, vanity TLDs seemingly offer no additional protection from government seizure, though will offer additional protection from private sanctions (ie. registrar suspending a domain for alleged spam, obscene content, by error, etc).

Registry level seizures became the go to option for the US govt when the registrar was not in the jurisdiction of the US.

Seizing an entire TLD? That may be hard if it is operated outside the US but even if it could be done it forces the govt to raise its stakes when taking such action and there isn't a 3rd party registry or registrar that can cave in vs fight the govt action. I doubt Verisign did much to fight against the bodog.com seizure, probably just told those LEOs what docs they would need to comply with their demands to avoid being sued by the registrar or registrant.

Point being though again in the context of this thread, a .brand avoids all the vulnerability that additional 3rd parties brings.

 

[Domagon]

Seizing an entire TLD? That may be hard if it is operated outside the US but even if it could be done it forces the govt to raise its stakes when taking such action and there isn't a 3rd party registry or registrar that can cave in vs fight the govt action.

ICANN is a U.S. corporation under contract by the U.S. Dept of Commerce, and hence, when push comes to shove, all vanity TLDs will be under U.S. jurisdiction.

On an aside, ccTLDs are a bit of an enigma in regards to ICANN (currently operates IANA) being involved with their delegation and yet, to date, ccTLDs seem to be immune from direct U.S. legal action.

Point being though again in the context of this thread, a .brand avoids all the vulnerability that additional 3rd parties brings.

Your point is well taken regarding less 3rd parties. While it's true the registrar aspect disappears, for many vanity TLDs that's replaced with 3rd party registry operator - and just as with a registrar, a TLD holder can transfer to another registry contractor or doing it in-house (either of which will incur substantial extra cost with potential of technical disruption) should the need arise; won't stop the U.S. government, though, if they're so determined.

Another thing to consider is vanity TLDs are even easier to block / filter (ie. .xxx is a prime example) than 2nd level domains under currently existing legacy TLDs.

Most ISPs and servers cache the root zone file. Be a cinch to comply with a court order to delete / restrict a TLD - and hence, for their customers (running one's own DNS won't help for ISPs that intercept and reroute such requests to their own DNS servers), it's then effectively gone.

 

[richface]

Never

Never, I feel like I need to way in on this topic. Right I understand .com is the Gold Standard now! But the younger generation have a different view believe me when I say they do! I don't see why our younger generation will still cough up millions to secure great generics in .com when alternatives exist for cheap. I am a strong advocate of .com BUT What if google also decides to
populate .google with generics and sell advertising on .i.e credicards.google, loans.google etc they have the power to significantly wipe off the value of domains .com or not a big change is coming and It is my opinion that the value of domains will be significantly reduced by this new launch. Do not underestimate the power of "choice" more choice will definitely not increase the value of .com it has to be the other way round less choice! I will certainly not be holding onto a lot of domains as asset flipping sounds like a great short term strategy to me.My opinion only

some feel all this upcoming confusion will only make .com stronger

 

[scandiman]

ICANN is a U.S. corporation under contract by the U.S. Dept of Commerce, and hence, when push comes to shove, all vanity TLDs will be under U.S. jurisdiction.

On an aside, ccTLDs are a bit of an enigma in regards to ICANN (currently operates IANA) being involved with their delegation and yet, to date, ccTLDs seem to be immune from direct U.S. legal action.



Your point is well taken regarding less 3rd parties. While it's true the registrar aspect disappears, for many vanity TLDs that's replaced with 3rd party registry operator - and just as with a registrar, a TLD holder can transfer to another registry contractor or doing it in-house (either of which will incur substantial extra cost with potential of technical disruption) should the need arise; won't stop the U.S. government, though, if they're so determined.

Another thing to consider is vanity TLDs are even easier to block / filter (ie. .xxx is a prime example) than 2nd level domains under currently existing legacy TLDs.

Most ISPs and servers cache the root zone file. Be a cinch to comply with a court order to delete / restrict a TLD - and hence, for their customers (running one's own DNS won't help for ISPs that intercept and reroute such requests to their own DNS servers), it's then effectively gone.

It's an interesting topic and I agree that an over zealous govt will typically find ways to impose its will on its subjects, that's no reason to make it easy on them. Blocking an entire TLD would now be running into the censorship area, no prob in China but here in the US it's a different story.

Again the point of all this in the context of this thread is a .brand gives a company more control over their webspace, the legal aspects we've touched on is just one aspect of that control but quite enticing considering how vital the web is in today's business world.

 

[Jasonn]

I agree with Scandiman's point that .brand may become a status indicator with not-.brand domains being a poor man's alternative for companies. But generic terms will still make sense for selling things, unless of course Google continues scaring people off EMD names.

But here is an interesting thought: how does a member of the public do a typein for .brand? What would you type? info.brand? home.brand? com.brand? Or will Google redirect a search for a keyword to .keyword?

People often assume the most likely active email address for a domain is info@, so if they assume something similar for .brand domain homepages info.com or home.com will get a nice stream of typeins. Localhost.com is a nice parking page LOL.

one thing no one seems to be able to answer is what benefit is there to use .brand over brand.com? I can see some benefit to generics in terms of keyword.keyword but otherwise, its just a vanity extention. please, someone point out what there is to gain for big corps switching out the .com's they've used for 15-20 years to these brand new .whatever with nearly zero public awareness and zero years of link popularity.

---------- Post added at 01:16 PM ---------- Previous post was at 01:10 PM ----------

Registry level seizures became the go to option for the US govt when the registrar was not in the jurisdiction of the US.

Seizing an entire TLD? That may be hard if it is operated outside the US but even if it could be done it forces the govt to raise its stakes when taking such action and there isn't a 3rd party registry or registrar that can cave in vs fight the govt action. I doubt Verisign did much to fight against the bodog.com seizure, probably just told those LEOs what docs they would need to comply with their demands to avoid being sued by the registrar or registrant.

Point being though again in the context of this thread, a .brand avoids all the vulnerability that additional 3rd parties brings.

isn't neustar going to be 'running' these new tlds?

http://www.domainnamenews.com/new-g...gistry-services-for-up-to-358-new-gtlds/11354

 

[mjnels]

one thing no one seems to be able to answer is what benefit is there to use .brand over brand.com? I can see some benefit to generics in terms of keyword.keyword but otherwise, its just a vanity extention. please, someone point out what there is to gain for big corps switching out the .com's they've used for 15-20 years to these brand new .whatever with nearly zero public awareness and zero years of link popularity.

not sure about switching out their main .com's... that sounds unlikely. but on TV, radio, billboards for example, business use different URL's to keep track of how effective their advertising is. sometimes its like Dell.com/10percentoffdeal, etc.. in the case of businesses who will use these on a closed network, not offering registrations to the public - having a keyword bank all to themselves is one angle of this thing.

i think the question a lot of readers are really asking themselves is "how does this benefit/hurt domainers?" is there an answer to that question right now?

 

[scandiman]

isn't neustar going to be 'running' these new tlds?

http://www.domainnamenews.com/new-g...gistry-services-for-up-to-358-new-gtlds/11354

Per that article they have the opportunity to run up to 358 of them. Afilias is saying they've got 305 applicants, that leaves over 1,000 more... http://www.afilias.info/news/2012/06/12/afilias-bringing-hundreds-new-top-level-domains-internet

 

[Jasonn]

not sure about switching out their main .com's... that sounds unlikely. but on TV, radio, billboards for example, business use different URL's to keep track of how effective their advertising is. sometimes its like Dell.com/10percentoffdeal, etc.. in the case of businesses who will use these on a closed network, not offering registrations to the public - having a keyword bank all to themselves is one angle of this thing.

i think the question a lot of readers are really asking themselves is "how does this benefit/hurt domainers?" is there an answer to that question right now?

thats a hard thing to answer right now. it would appear some in this thread hope that it does. i can only imagine they aren't very serious in this business. some probably think they'll buy some of these keyword.gltd domains and make bank? Unless your frank shilling or some other all star domainer, this ride isn't for you and we'll just have to watch from the sidelines and see how it plays out. history has not been kind to new tlds but who knows, things could be different this time. personally i hope it doesn't hurt domainers, i'm sure there is room enough for both worlds.

also interesting to note that facebook didn not apply for .facebook but recently bought face.com for millions.

---------- Post added at 01:33 PM ---------- Previous post was at 01:31 PM ----------

Per that article they have the opportunity to run up to 358 of them. Afilias is saying they've got 305 applicants, that leaves over 1,000 more... http://www.afilias.info/news/2012/06/12/afilias-bringing-hundreds-new-top-level-domains-internet

My point is though that there will be 3rd parties, maybe not all but most as I'm sure these companies do not have experience running registries. At any rate i think the idea that if bodog had .bodog that they never would of been shut down is just plain speculative.

 

[scandiman]

i think the question a lot of readers are really asking themselves is "how does this benefit/hurt domainers?" is there an answer to that question right now?

When I first heard this news my thought is that at least for a time the easy availability of new tlds will chop off the high end sales, I mean why spend $2 million on one domain if you can spend 1/10th of that and own the entire TLD for your business? I realize the recurring costs are quite different and possibly also the business models behind them but ultimately some folks are giving it a whirl. Try and buy music.com vs buy .music. Getting the whole TLD will probably save $10-20 mil over the com. Time will tell if it is ultimately worth it.

As for small fry opportunities flipping in these new extensions, depends on if they allow general registrations but I suspect there will be some quick flips for profits. As for long term buy and hold opportunities, who knows.

---------- Post added at 10:44 AM ---------- Previous post was at 10:41 AM ----------

My point is though that there will be 3rd parties, maybe not all but most as I'm sure these companies do not have experience running registries. At any rate i think the idea that if bodog had .bodog that they never would of been shut down is just plain speculative.

I never said they never would be shut down, I'm saying owning your own TLD may make the process harder. I'm not a legal expert, just looking at the possibilities.