Innovate or Die !

This is clearly just a marketing pitch for .best.
It should be moved to the promotional section.

Brad

First like comes from Rob Monster, surprise!

Move it tot he self promotional forum, or even the bin!

bmugford said:

This is clearly just a marketing pitch for .best.
It should be moved to the promotional section.

Brad

Click to expand...

Brad, I can understand that you want to move it wherever you want, no problem with that, but if each time I am talking here it's a marketing pitch, it will be hard to communicate and exchange value. Just sayin.

bmugford said:

This is clearly just a marketing pitch for .best.
It should be moved to the promotional section.

Click to expand...

Sure it is, but smartly done, as @Cyril.Best raises an important point, one that should be of concern to any domainer with substantial assets, who is playing the long game, as I am.

I'm absent from social media. It's mind boggling (to me at least) how otherwise smart and cautious people open themselves up and their significant others, including small children, to total strangers' scrutiny. How they scramble for followers, whom they would probably describe as stalkers in real life and call the Police on!

But this is just me, one old geezer not in sync with the times, it seems. Cyril is right, social media is exploding. Everything seems to be moving there. As it happens, domains seem to be lagging a little behind, but only a little bit. The trend is undisputable. I'm observing this with distaste and awareness of more and more opportunities just passing me by

Beat them or join them, the choice is clear. I plan to start with Twitter and LinkedIn. Twitter being the least invasive, IMO. And LinkedIn best suited to researching contacts and linking with potential domain end users / buyers...

What do you think?

As for domains following dinosaurs, becoming extinct... I think we still have a little time left, like a decade or likely two, even... at that point, 90% of online exchange will be conducted by autonomous assistants, machines, robots, anyway

Cyril.Best said:

I truly think that the primary reason why our industry is in danger ...is because of the lack of innovation.

Click to expand...

Where did you get the information that the domain industry is in danger? Nothing could be further from the truth! Heck .. even the numbers you posted show going from $3B to $4B in 5 years .. and I'm pretty sure those stats likely don't include aftermarket numbers where most would tell you the market is the hottest it has ever been in ... well since the creation of the Internet! lol

Heck .. I'm only 2.5 years into officially domaining, but also into a couple of horrible years outside of domains, health issues with myself, my mom, my dog; flooding in my condo; insurance conflicts with both my own and the condo's; lawsuits with my neighbours because of it; issues at work at my "real world" full-time job because of my knees; extreme complications with an old side-business because of a death mid-transaction then my actual partner leaving the country to take care of his parents leaving me with a colossal poopstorm of debt, paperwork and stress; and finally taking all the time it takes to share my lists with all of you here at NamePros and at NameCult. Because of all of that means that I haven't been on top of things in terms of managing my own portfolio .. the majority aren't priced and aren't even listed at all the market places, and I haven't set up landing pages yet .. I'd say I'm only operating at 20% of optimum. (I can just hear @Michael Cyger scolding me now for being such a bad domainer .. lol)

Anyhow .. the point of me bringing all that up, is that despite all that .. I closed my 4th $xxxx sale of 2019 a couple weeks ago and actually have a small number of open negotiations (of which I'm guessing I'll probably eventually close one). If the rest of the year I slow to half of my current sales velocity, I'll still be profitable. But if I actually have the time to price everything and list all my domains at ALL the venues as well as set up landing pages .. then sky is the limit!

So .. all that to say that anyone who tells you the domain industry is in danger .. doesn't know the industry .. or doesn't know what danger is! lol

Cyril.Best said:

Reality is : Apps replace domains & trading move slowly from domains to social media accounts.

Click to expand...

Both Apps and Social most certainly are big business and are never going away .. but the extent, reach and effect on domains has been totally blow out of proportions. Part of the app and social explosions were a "fad" effect .. the realities of both apps and social are becoming more and more clear (and honestly .. it was clear 2-3 years ago already .. this is most certainly not old news in my opinion) ...

People can't be bothered with most apps any more ... particularly those that would compete with what most websites are. We are back to a time where people are just going to go to your site instead of going through the hassle of installing an app. With social media the news talks about people closing their accounts ... but that's really a fraction of the real issues with social media .. which is usage intensity .. 10 years ago everyone was on Facebook 2-3 hours a day ... today most of those people are barely on 2 hours a week. All the news shows is kids to whom social is new so they're glued to it 3 hours a day ... but when those kids hit their mid-20's .. the same thing is going to happen .. the novelty will wear off and usage intensity will plunge.

Both are still huge and growing industries .. most definitely that can not be denied at all .. but there is no danger of them replacing the Internet and domains .. both of which have tons of growth ahead of them. More importantly on top of numbers of domains, unlike social, usage intensity on the Internet is also growing .. sure eCommerce is huge .. but the average spend per person still has significantly more room to grow .. thus actually amplifying the importance of domains even if the total number of people on the Internet stayed the same.

Cyril.Best said:

Of course, my deep thought is that all ngtlds will not be there in few years. Concentration already starts.

Click to expand...

Despite what all the people say on both sides of the ngTLD debate .. the fact of the matter is that they are doing pretty much exactly as we "should" have expected. So yes .. most ngTLD's won't be left standing in the end. But this started pretty much on the 2nd day after launch .. years ago .. and is a totally natural business phenomenon,

Here in Montreal 9 out of 10 restaurants fail .. yet nobody says the restaurant business in Montreal is failing. It's just natural business evolution and progression. It's also tougher for domainers to make money with ngTLD's because we are getting squeezed out by the registries "Premium Pricing" effectively making them the domainer. (Not sure how you don't see that as evolution BTW?). But in the end many of those ngTLD's are still making money as a whole. The domain industry is in fact so healthy that it has absorbed the effect of the very significant evolution that was the ngTLD program itself!

The problem with most ngTLD's is the same with restaurants the closed ... dozens of potential things that ultimately come down to the owners not understanding what the market needed or wanted. It boggles my mind at some of the horrible ngTLD's that were applied for in the first round! Looking back it should have been more obvious .. but people simply got caught up in the Gold Rush mentality effect.

Cyril.Best said:

As for our side, we choose to innovate and move in the social media industry for one primary reason : the market ...

Click to expand...

It's great for your or any business to innovate and expand .. hopefully you'll succeed .. but the "innovate or die" thing is mainly applicable to the ngTLD's who never even had enough demand to survive in the first place .. which has very VERY little to do with the "Domain Industry" as a whole .. and even less on the sector that is "Domaining".

For you to pivot and succeed is a good accomplishment if it pans out for .best .. but truth be told .. that doesn't even represent anything close to the majority of ngTLD registries .. let alone the entire industry.

Cyril.Best said:

For the ones that still don't know anything about us, I think that selling domains to social media users is the key strategy on the long play.

Click to expand...

Nothing new here .. almost every single new content creation company from the last decade spawned from social media. Then to help us domainers, most social companies took more and more control from content creators and advertisers .. which only amplified everyone's need for their own domain. Again though .. this has been going on since even before the first ngTLD's were even launched.

Cyril.Best said:

There is 1 Million new social media users every day against +100K .com new registrations.

Click to expand...

But don't forget that there is vastly more overhead and overall expenses when it comes to building a social media platform. You're making a totally unrelated comparison. Plus as I mentioned before .. social is bleeding page views and usage intensity .. which is the real gauge of how many ads social companies can sell.

Cyril.Best said:

See below the chart that explain why we made a significant move from the domain name industry to the social media industry.

Click to expand...

I think some gave you a hard time in that other "7 figures" thread. I though you brought up some good points and helpful information in your 2nd post (which you really should have included in your first post). I don't really think it was fair for people to say you were just there to self promote (in a way that's what everyone is or should be doing on NP's .. lol) ... but I'm going to have a harder time defending you with this one .. maybe you should have simply chosen a more appropriate title .. because most definitely the Domain Industry is not in any danger .. and the parts that actually are thriving aren't in any need of pivoting like some of the ngTLD registries might need to (which combined the failing ngTLD's represent less than 0.1% of the industry) .. while the rest of the industry grows 33% in 5 years based on the stats you yourself provided (which doesn't account for the aftermarket which in itself is exploding)!



Anyhow .. no hard feelings .. I truly do wish you the .best of success .. from the looks of it .best doesn't fall in that unfortunate 0.1% .. it most certainly is one of the better ngTLD's (whatever that says .. lol .. cause I still don't get .xyz .. lol). Indeed if new and alternate uses for domains get developed then that most definitely strengthens the industry as a whole .. but where I find you are completely wrong is by saying that the domain industry "needs" to do it in order to avoid impending danger!

Maybe your next ngTLD should be .Robinson so you can secure Will.Robinson

.Best of luck! .SmileyFace

@Ategy.com said it all .

It doesn’t matter what your propaganda says, the gtld forum that shared your enthusiasm maybe better suited for your train of thought, but I believe it has turned into a ghost town, and no longer even loads.

I purchased gtlds since day 1 as a defensive play on my .com portfolio, fast forward 5 years, well it seems I really didn’t need to do that because the real end users don’t care, they are more interested in the tried, tested, and true, putting a dot into the middle of a phrase, or keyword combination is not exactly innovation. It is just another avenue for opportunists to profit from the unknown.

Mind you there are smart investors who were able to do good with the extensions, but that changed greatly in 2017, when the gtld extensions really got over bearing with reserves, and premiums, and basically took a nose dive. There will always be people who think outside the box, but they have to work 10x as hard to get the same message across usually than they do with .com, and end users understand this for the most part.

The social media play has been shown with vine going offline, with Facebook, and its privacy struggles, in the end people want to ultimately have their own say, and control over their content. We have seen many social media accounts hacked, many times they are lost as their is no real way to get them back thru assosication, or proof there of. Like The Domains twitter account which took legal action.

I saw .best when it came out, but it’s a backwards term best.cars best.schools best.restaurants etc... cars.best schools.best restaurants.best these make little sense. You have limited use keyword combinations that make proper English sense in this extension, for that reason it is essentially flawed. I think you had some general traction from the Chinese market when things were riding high, but they moved into crypto, and cared less with the daily pump of domains, you probably lost that momentum. I see you do the promotional $1,99 registrations, but you only need to look at how .info timeline to see how that tends to conclude.

Do you think .web will bring innovation at $19.99, when .net is failing at $10.99? 3 letters that translate into basically the same thing, one has a 2 decades head start, but the marketing machines will tell you that you need to own a .web, even though .net is breaking down slowly in front of us, going from investment grade, to essentially just another extension.

Innovation is more about content, and creation, not exactly the channel, or platform to deliver such content, in which .com dominates, and every gtld hipster is trying to sell you something better for $1.99, like a checkout trinket.

I agree with Brad, what you are doing is basically marketing .best without compensating namepros, and just trying to create empty threads, or conversations around it. We are not stupid people here that we fall for the shiny new object approach.

As I stated .best makes little sense, as I remember M Berkens mentioning this years ago also terms like BestPlumbers.com worked well, but Plumbers.Best will never work.

I don't own any .best domain
because what sells are .com and .de

they are best for me

businesses will understand its no good idea
to build a business on a domain that belongs to a 3rd party

Cyril.Best said:

Reality is : Apps replace domains & trading move slowly from domains to social media accounts.

Of course, my deep thought is that all ngtlds will not be there in few years. Concentration already starts.

There is 1 Million new social media users every day against +100K .com new registrations.

And so, I am really interested to know how many of you already think or already trade social media user accounts (facebook, twitter, ...) up to to their domains ?

Click to expand...

Love your title!

So, personal take/experience on some of your bolded comments. Now, from skimming over some of your other promotional material, I've gleamed that you're a "hard numbers" guy, as well you should be, corps thrive on it. What is unfortunate, much data that corps gleam from whatever yardstick they use, it is always done in such a way that underscores and validates a mission strategy.

There is a big, big problem, and it is worldwide, of discounting the "gray" areas of all this evidence-based data the corps gather. It looks solely to results, and discounts everything that happens in between. Essentially, taking the humanity out of usage.

Massive misconception: Apps replace domains & trading move slowly from domains to social media accounts.
Quite the contrary. Social media usage is becoming passe, and so is reliance on smart phones. Folks are moving away from this stuff. Its old news. Want data? Get a real job, put boots to ground, get out to the real world, go into peoples homes, and communicate with them on a personal level. Ask them.

There is 1 Million new social media users every day against +100K .com new registrations. So what? I'm not going to let this stifle DN innovations. Don't let this kind of data prevent us from using the new innovations being made avail to us..eg the introduction of the domain name system to developing countries, fortifying the existence of available online identities through domain name usage.

And so, I am really interested to know how many of you already think or already trade social media user accounts (facebook, twitter, ...) up to to their domains ?
Not I. I prefer a good, hard .com or new G to represent my brand on the Internet, rather than some conglomerate having control over my content, thanks. Would rather see registries and registrars begin an aggressive approach to marketing domains to Mom and Pop in such a way that it educates usage and website build.

Again, nice title, Innovate or Die, this is a domaining forum, we should be looking for ways to strengthen the DN as such, not excuses to move away from it.

Cyril.Best said:

Hi DPs,

Click to expand...

Who are DPs? You wrote this post originally for DigitalPoint? I thought it was dead like 10 years ago.

I will be brief (I will believe that when I see it, NPs members say )

• The title is innovate or die. We should use that for a discussion of any innovation, not just .best or social media. I agree that innovation is critical for growth. Let's talk innovation in a general way.
• I think we need innovation in the interface between end users and domain holders, which is not working well. The vast majority of new businesses are not purchasing an aftermarket domain. Brandable marketplaces were an innovation but we need more
• I think we need innovation in ways to build trust from end users. We could learn some things from the real estate market. The secure spaces from Google are a step in the right direction. Undeveloped have done a good job in stressing trust and rapid response. Every sale and owner needs to be tracked in an openly available manner like real estate is. There should be low cost insurance to protect against buying a stolen domain name, etc.
• I think we need innovation in new uses for domain names. Ideas like the integrated icu domain and personal web sharing that was mentioned by Rob of Epik. I would argue domain phrases are another innovation with potential. The social network of .best may be another.
• I think we need to bring order and certainty to renewal prices. ICANN should set limits on renewal increases for all extensions. The lifetime renewal innovation from Epik is an innovation.
• We need better ways to find available domain names. Dofo is an innovation in my opinion. Why do the big players in the marketplace market not have search engines that are as powerful as the interface NameBio have for their database?
• Ultimately we need to convince every person on the globe (and every business) that they need their own domain name and why. I think this is the superb time with trust over misinformation and data privacy and conglomerates controlling and making money from their content to convince people that their own website is the right path.

Just my humble opinion.
Bob

Maybe "innovate" a better way to market your extension. Maybe learn to be a little more nuanced when it comes to promotion.

The vast majority of successful domain investors are very good at analytics, and therefore can see right through hyperbole and grandiose claims backed by very little. We have also had years at this point of registry operators making unrealistic projections.

I can take a turd in a box and call it innovation. The label itself is meaningless without actual innovation.

Also, there are endless new startups that use terms like "game changer", "paradigm shift, "disrupt the market.", etc. Do you know why the vast majority fail? Well, because they have poor products, business models, unrealistic projections, etc.

All "innovation" is not innovative.

Brad

golan said:

Who are DPs? You wrote this post originally for digitalpoint? I thought it was dead like 10 years ago.

Click to expand...

Domain Pro's

bmugford said:

I can take a turd in a box and call it innovation. The label itself is meaningless without actual innovation.

Also, there are endless new startups that use terms like "game changer", "paradigm shift, "disrupt the market.", etc. Do you know why the vast majority fail? Well, because they have poor products, business models, unrealistic projections, etc.

Click to expand...

Yep, fancy catch-phrases become the flavour of the month, or year, but no meat behind it. I always say, you really want to know how a business is doing? Go behind the customer display area, into the abdomen. Its what we don't see, that tells the real story.

bmugford said:

... there are endless new startups that use terms like "game changer", "paradigm shift, "disrupt the market.", etc.

Click to expand...

HotKey said:

Yep, fancy catch-phrases become the flavour of the month, or year, but no meat behind it.

Click to expand...

I don't know what the heck you guys are talking about .. fancy catch-phrases are the best thing ever!

Hi,

It's late here so pardon to not having answer all your quotes. I want first to thank you all for your detailed remarks and points of view even the ones that we do not agree with. So thank you to took time for us.

I will just for tonight try to answer the one that was probably the most I do not agree with.

HotKey said:

Love your title!

Massive misconception: Apps replace domains & trading move slowly from domains to social media accounts.
Quite the contrary. Social media usage is becoming passe, and so is reliance on smart phones. Folks are moving away from this stuff. Its old news. Want data? Get a real job, put boots to ground, get out to the real world, go into peoples homes, and communicate with them on a personal level. Ask them.

Click to expand...

As I want to stay gentle on this, I first encourage you to update your data on this if you haven't yet :

- https://www.statista.com/statistics/277229/facebooks-annual-revenue-and-net-income/
- https://www.cnbc.com/2019/01/30/facebook-earnings-q4-2018.html

If you don't get the reason why Social Media ad revenues are explosing, just asked US TV where goes $20B in two years. Ads on social media is still underpriced and growth as users. It's not me, it's data at scale.

FB Ads is still at the stage that Google Ads was 10 years ago : underpriced !

Means also that revenues of FB will continue to growth over the next decade - Despite all what happened to FB in terms of data privacy, It's growing !

FB just announced recently a shift in its strategy to even go more and more on the messaging play.

Coz Smartphones has taken all user attention right now - ignoring this fact is simply not even possible in 2019.

Don't even want to speak about our millenials usage : Let me tell you a short story on this (don't want to make it a promotion coz I know how everybody is sensitive on this), but when we develop our social network, we give it in beta to test our MVP to all possible user categories.

As for millenials, we used our children - safer and cheaper

So, I gave it to my son (His own domain name + own website to make reviews).

I give him the phone - He asked me : I have to go on my domain name to write a review like on a blog.

I said : Yes of course like that it's : your own domain, your own data, your own website. Nice isn't it ?

He said : "No way - Never ! If it ain't go through an app, I will never use it"

That is the reality right now and that was the answer of all our millenial panel : where's the app ? without an app - they will simply never use it.

You can deny it, you can not love it, but it's there.

I would even say that I dislike it coz its much more work for us and we are not app designer.

---

But guess what, in terms of innovation and danger, i see even a bigger danger coming for the domain name industry. Even Bigger on the long play that social medias and I am even surprised that none of you related this important trend :

Search is becoming voice search !

In the next years, a big part of G search will be done through voice and voice only

So, where is the .com value in a such disruption ?

What will be the value of a.com against a ngtld domain on voice search ?

Seriously, I really want to hear it.

Voice search SEO is totally different from current G SEO ! Trust me, we test it !

And Google is giving less and less value to domain names in classic SEO.

Disruption comes always first from devices before applications. You know that !

So, of course, it can take 10 years but all Google and Amazon are right now putting all their energies in A.I and R&D on voice search.

The first disruption already happens with the smartphones 10 years ago and now there is 3 Billions social media users for ... 350 millions domains.

3 Billions bloggers that post everyday content on the internet for free without the necessity of a single domain name.

Please, reminds me the growth of .com ? The .com and .net TLDs had a combined increase of approximately 5.9 million domain name registrations, or 4.0 percent, year over year.

I repeat coz numbers are important here :
5.9M domains growth in a year (for .com + .net) compare to 1M new social media user account everyday !

Once more, I don't mean that domain name industry is dead, I just made the acquisition of TLD so trust me I am not fucking crazy.

I mean that the domain name industry has to move (as for my provocative title ) and I am not speaking here about the aftermarket - I mean generally - for all of us !

Last thing : Don't think, we are not living in the real world coz I spoke directly with Verisign & Google.

So please, try to not giving us a failure (I mean generally), without knowing exactly our business plan, marketing strategy, projections, cash flow ... and new partnerships.

A long journey is coming for us, don't worry - we know it - I never insult the future but I do everything to be prepare for it.

And I don't blame anybody for septicism, untrust, or whatever ... coz it's a normal process and I would probably do the same at your place.

We are working to give you proof and trust so I contacted Michael from Namebios.

I think in few days (time for namepros normal due diligence) most of you will also probably understand better who we are - not our strategy - but our achievements.

Whatever can remain our divergence on innovation and danger, I wish you the .best for your trade.

CF

Ps :

@bmugford : Last question for brad : Why when it's me speaking, it's just a marketing promotion for the .best (I want you to explain me which part of voice search is related to .best for instance) and why when someone is claiming : "I prefer a good, hard .com" - it's not marketing promotion for the .com ?
Nothing against this but all comments should be treated the same. Just sayin.

@HotKey : You are right - DP is for Domain Pro's. Your codes - My codes.

Cyril.Best said:

FB FB FB

Click to expand...

Cyril .. I don't think anyone is debating most of what you're saying.

Although some of that data you referenced doesn't say the whole story.

But most importantly .. you state "A" in your title .. and then you go on to talk about almost every other letter in the alphabet.

The fact is that the overall domain industry is strong.

The top domain names are drying up making the next tier more and more valuable.

Nobody here cares about how many domains are registered .. it might sound like an important metric .. but it's pretty meaningless as I doubt even 20% are even used. What's important to us is if there is growth in demand in the domains that we resell .. of which there most certainly is.

The difference between all ngTLD's getting deleted or there being a doubling of ngTLD's will likely make little overall difference to the average domainer.

Those industry overarching numbers affect registrars to some degree .. but not us.

There is no point to comparing Social Media and Domains .. they aren't competing with each other ... in fact .. I'd even argue that the more people Social Media get on the internet, the more potential clients we eventually have as domainers.


Yes it's theoretically cool what you are doing bringing social and domains together .. and not only do I wish you luck and success with it .. and I might even check it out myself at some point .. but at the end of the day it doesn't really mean all that much for domainers other than potential new clients.


The whole world is still in explosive growth mode in terms of the digitisation of human civilisation.


The fact of the matter is that even with voice search .. branding matters .. image and trust matter .. and while indeed voice search might bite into things a bit .. it's only a very small portion of the growth that's ahead. It's like if someone is going to give you $20 in one dollar bills and you drop one .. sure it sucks .. but you still have $19 more than you had before.

I'd argue that social has significantly more barriers and challenges to come. Although admittedly .. like in every other corner of the digital world .. it still has room to grow.

Also .. you talk about social using only Facebook ... why don't you use Friendster or MySpace or Google Plus and then average out your stats.

The only companies with any potential of eventually surpassing Facebook can only do so by offering significantly more control to end users ... which effectively means less profits.

In the last year Facebook has gone from 241M users in North America to 242M users ... so yes on a graph it's growth .. but at the end of the day I guarantee you what they gained in users, they lost multiple times over in terms of usage intensity. Thankfully where they've stepped up is monetisation .. but that's more because they weren't optimised in the past for revenue as they were focused on growth.

Anyhow .. I'm not even sure why I'm going deeper into this as my whole point is that there really isn't any point comparing Social to domains .. it's like comparing Tesla to Amazon .. both are doing fine .. and just because one is doing better doesn't mean the other needs to "innovate or die"

Cyril.Best said:

@bmugford : Last question for brad : Why when it's me speaking, it's just a marketing promotion for the .best (I want you to explain me which part of voice search is related to .best for instance) and why when someone is claiming : "I prefer a good, hard .com" - it's not marketing promotion for the .com ?
Nothing against this but all comments should be treated the same. Just sayin.

Click to expand...

Look at the general discussion forum and the type of topics there. If you want a real discussion, start a real discussion. If it just circles back to promoting your product, that is promotional.

If you can only have a discussion that results in you pushing your product aggressively then it is likely to be moved to the promotional section like this one was.

Brad

Almost majority(including me) of people are behind trading purpose - every single person is buying domain for instant profit except those who really understand the value of domain and use it in proper manner. Its like "I spent $10 now i want $1000 within week." here there is no use of that keyword in productive manner( no one is thinking to build the reputation and sell it for better ROI). If you are trader then it is totally different topic. But here there is definitely lack of innovation in new tld's now please don't bombard your comment for negative era. What is truth is Truth we can't ignore that. At least allow someone to express thoughts & ideas to present & if you don't agree or if you don't like then you can express it with respect (I guess, NP has unlike option too) , in a professional manner instead of throwing immature craps. Even i am also against domain renewal prices but i raised the query and got the solution too.

He is here with different ideas. Tell me a single tld who have plans to provide free domains(soon that will also going to happen with .best) with free social come website and opportunity to earn rewards by spending good time. Starting is always tough my dear friends. I genuinely see something very unique project in the market. I have spent little time to get response for The.best social network this week (Like how people feel to get chance to stand out to the world with their own website instead of following FB or Twitter URL) from my surrounding people where i stay. Guess what i received is amazing response for this kind of project especially for well established brands. I am not a professional in this field also not senior like you all. I truly respect domainers but really feel sad to see commenting negatively. Good luck with future. Stay calm and be innovative instead.