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poll Is there a future for new GTLDs?

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Are new GTLDs penetrating?

  • This poll is still running and the standings may change.
  • This poll is still running and the standings may change.

Leo Angelo

DomaincracyTop Member
Impact
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I was surprised to learn today that a non-domainer friend migrated his website to the same name .blog because "for a blog, .blog makes more sense than .com." What about the renewal fee? "$29/yr. Not enough to be a deterrent."
He is an intelligent person who appreciates using the best and the fewest words. Using the self-explanatory TLD makes sense and is worth the extra money, in his opinion.
Maybe the new GLTDs are making inroads with public awareness and will keep gaining market share. What do you think, how do you feel about it?
 
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The views expressed on this page by users and staff are their own, not those of NamePros.
people in the ghetto will get to engage in governance services with governance.app
 
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people in the ghetto will be able to authenticate goods with authentication.app
 
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people in the ghetto will get to participate in voting with consensus.app
 
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people in the ghetto will be able to buy and sell goods with merchant.app
 
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people in the ghetto will be able to exchange their mobile money with africash.app
 
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It will take years together to replace .COM with new gtlds I would say.

Still the end users / internet users / people from all walks of life perceive that .COM extension is the internet address for any website.

It will take time for them to learn that the other available tlds , only when the mass users get used to these new tlds , the demand will increase hence the price.

Again , this is just an theory , because owners who own new gtlds have to hold onto their domains until it picks up momentum.

God knows what might happen in future , because things can change in future , the internet mechanism might itself get changed due course.

Entry of smartphones disrupted the normal mobile phones with dial pads .
Smartphones also paved way for mobile apps.
Something in this line might change how internet & websites are accessed , which in turn will change the domain names / extensions that we use today :)
 
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A quick Google search for "how much of the worlds population is online" and currently most of the results say it's closer to 50/50....a quick estimate of several of the results...still HUGE room for growth=value increase for ALL domains whether it be .com...or a ngtld...everybody wins!!! 😉
 
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A quick Google search for "how much of the worlds population is online" and currently most of the results say it's closer to 50/50....a quick estimate of several of the results...still HUGE room for growth=value increase for ALL domains whether it be .com...or a ngtld...everybody wins!!! 😉

60% and almost all of developed world. All left is half of the third world and old people in developed world, mostly people with no money. May top out at 80-90%. This why domain numbers barely growing. Saturate.

Be accurate if you want to take money, believing fake stats like only 20% penetration is bad idea.
 
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Is it even politically correct to call it a ghetto nowadays?

I would say financially challenged neighborhoods. :xf.wink:

As far as the new gTLD's replacing .com @phptechie that will never happen because .com set the standard. Now what will happen is that the entire domain scenario gets replaced with voice commands.

Just say "Go to Apple" and your device will know you like technology and take to to apple's website. It does not matter what the address is because chances are the address bar has long since disappeared.

This entire conversation is pointless because it is the elimination of the domain extensions themselves that threaten .com's. Nothing else will dethrone the king other than the fact that we no longer have a king and whatever the new technology looks like the voice will probably be the instrument to control it.

With mobile devices taking over the screen sizes are limited and an address bar is wasted space. It's a question of time before ANY domain extension becomes redundant and will no longer be a point of discussion.

I even see the phone number becoming more important again as google is already linking services like duo to the phone number and email addresses are becoming less important. So if email is becoming less important then domains cannot be that far behind.

Change is on the horizon, I cannot say exactly what but if I were a betting man I would say the last stronghold domains will have the longest life expectancy with the new gTLD's probably being the first casualties.

Think about it.... why do we need a dot at all?

Green Hat . Associates

Why not just say Green Hat Associates?
That dot will become less and less important as technology moves forward with voice control.
 
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Dot app? It is run by google, isn't it? So... Each day more and more people realize that this particular company should not be trusted. And are trying to avoid it as much as they can ("ungoogled chrome"... non-android smartphones... "DuckDuckGo The search engine that doesn't track you" etc, etc, etc). Which means less trust to anything google offers, including .app extension
 
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Is there a future for new GTLDs?

Of course there will be. And the future is now, it is just not happening on a such large or quick enough scale for people to stand and take notice. It will be one of those processions that one day, we'll all be like.. "holy crap, when did this sneak up on us??" and we'll be virtually surrounded by new G usage everywhere.

I think though, the real question is, is there a future for new GTLD investing? Because this is where the waters are murky, and one must tread with precautions in place.
 
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Most sensible people biased to .com!!

When you walk into phone shop are you biased to Apple or Nokia? You are wishful thinking and putting new tld on equal pedestal to .com, you will lose your shirt because these extensions are dirt! Look around you, walk on the street, do you see new tld? Grandmas know what most new tld investors still haven't learnt!
@johnnie018 is full of it. He is bashing newtld at every chance. Now he's wasting our time with presumably FAKE WTB newtld to try trolling us: https://www.namepros.com/threads/new-tld-domains-wanted.1134017/ Don't trust this snake!
 
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The biggest point about the new gTLD's is not the renewal price. Most successful entities or businesses will spend money on a decent domain.

The BIG problem I see here is basing my business on one of the new gTLD's only to have it shut down in the future.
There is a procedure for gTLDs that fail (Emergency Backend Registry Operator/ EBERO) where another registry can take over the operation of a gTLD where the registry has issues.

https://www.icann.org/resources/pages/ebero-2013-04-02-en

Regards...jmcc
 
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Leo - I think the horsepower for new TLDs will come from bundling TLDs with specific hosted applications.

The .BLOG is interesting. You have WPEngine charging $290 per year for Wordpress hosting. It is a nice business. Wordpress or others could easily compete there by bundling .BLOG with high performance Wordpress, e.g. enhanced with BitMitigate.com for CDN, DDoS mitigation and site optimization.
It is a good example of a tied TLD, Rob,
The .BLOG is an unusual one in that it has a natural market that ties in with the dominant software in that market.

The same can apply to most of the other new TLDs. Some registries understand this and are starting to put serious efforts behind platform innovation. In particular, I believe that Donuts will do this following the controlling investment by Abry Partners last year.
The main concentration of a lot of registries is now on renewal rates. This is how TLDs live and die.

Also, keep in mind that if .COM, .ORG and others lose their price caps in the coming years, the gap between TLD prices will go away regardless which will set the stage for accelerated adoption of new TLDs. All that said, I do think the window is closing for this.
The .ORG registry made a decision to stop discounting offers (or curtail them) last year. It is beginning to work out. It is getting rid of a lot of noise from the zone and it is stabilising renewal rates. The price cap issue is very tricky. With NGTs with high renewal fees, the renewal rate is quite stable. Low registration and renewal fee NGTs have lower renewal rates. Unlike a lot of the NGTs, the majority of registrations in the NGTs are new. The bulk of registrations in the legacy gTLDs are veteran registrations that have been renewed for a year or more.

There is plenty of room for innovation in this space. The industry should see TLDs acquiring operating companies and moving from primary dependence on registrars for distribution. It is the only real way forward but most registries lack the courage to embrace that reality.
Consolidation is inevitable. The problem is that there are some NGTs that do not seem to be viable in terms of gaining new registrations each month (hundreds rather than the necessary thousands a new TLD needs in its launch phase).

Some of the registries completely underestimated the marketing requirements for new TLDs. Unfortunately there were a lot of spoofers passing themselves off as experts when the NGTs were being dealt with at ICANN level and the ICANN predictions were pure Numerology/Astrology by people who were completely ignorant of the dynamics in the domain name market. The registries cannot bypass their registrars. The number of active registrars in NGTs varies and registars generally limit the shelf space for TLDs. If they are not making money from them, they won't carry them. A large registrar like Godaddy has scale but most of the smaller registrars tend to concentrate on the NGTs that are targeting their markets. If there is to be a big marketing push on the registry side, it will probably focus on the registrars with their own reseller/white lable operations. There are only about 2,500 ICANN accredited registrars but there's around a million or so hosters in the gTLDs. Many of these hosters are small operations that will never spend the money on becoming a fully accredited ICANN registrar. There was a discussion of this kind of outsourcing in the African market at one of the ICANN sessions a few months ago. The market is changing and the gTLDs are no longer the blue chip TLDs in many country level markets as the focus is switching away from .COM towards the local ccTLDs. Unfortunately ICANN's registry-registrar model is about twenty years out of date and needs to be overhauled.

Regards...jmcc
 
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There is a procedure for gTLDs that fail (Emergency Backend Registry Operator/ EBERO) where another registry can take over the operation of a gTLD where the registry has issues.

Yup and other registries will line up to bail out a failing one. :unsure:

The thing about failure is it usually means losing money.
When is the last time somebody did charity by buying out a failed business?

I think if and when one fails it will fail period.
 
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Does anyone see stats that support mass end user adoption other than mass speculator adoption?
Yes.

Also, Giving away .88 cent domains is a desperation move, and like then what happens with .loans filled with Spammers according to Spamhaus.
The problem NGT is .LOAN not .LOANS. In terms of usage, the ex-Famous Four .LOAN NGT is rather low as most of the sites are either adult or gambling affiliates. There are actually some genuine on-topic websites there dealing with loans. Over the next few months, if the new registry management does not resume the discounting model, the .LOAN NGT will lose approximately a million or so registrations. That is a good thing as most of these registrations are problem registrations and damage the credibility of the TLD. The Spamhaus stats apply to e-mail rather than usage. What has happened with these problem registrations is that they have almost completely moved from the legacy gTLDs to the new gTLDs (NGTs) that were running discount operations.

“Schilling informed me that GoDaddy will stop offering Uniregistry top level domain names. This isn’t the first time GoDaddy has dropped Uniregistry names, but it seems they now have put a permanent transition in place.
Basically Frank had to stop thinking like a domainer and start thinking like a registry operator. What he did, as unpleasant as it sounds, was the right thing. A new TLD cannot depend on domainers for all of its registrations. It needs Mom and Pop operations that will develop websites and get the TLD noticed and encourage others to use it.

Regards...jmcc
 
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Yup and other registries will line up to bail out a failing one. :unsure:

The thing about failure is it usually means losing money.
When is the last time somebody did charity by buying out a failed business?

I think if and when one fails it will fail period.
This is the side of the business that most domainers never see. :) If a TLD fails, then it generally means that it cannot cover costs. But if it has a sufficient number of registrations and these are brand protection registrations, these registrations will keep on being renewed. So if a deal can be done on the debt, a failed TLD can actually work out well for the operator that buys it. The .MOBI is a good example of this. For domaining in the Western market, it is effectively a dead gTLD. Many of its registrations are historical. But they keep on being renewed. The new first year registrations tend to renew at about 53%.For a non-core gTLD, that's not bad. The market in the gTLD has shifted and it is no longer a US/CA/EU/AU/NZ market and much of its new registrations come from the Asian market. It is continuing to decline in registrations but it is doing so slowly.

If a TLD fails and it has enough good quality registrations, then it will be picked up by a portfolio operator. Where a TLD fails badly and has no decent registrations, then it will be stuck in EBERO. The .WED is a good example of this.

Regards...jmcc
 
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Most nTLDs are served by Donuts...
I don't see any reasons why Donuts should fail...
 
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The same regarding Afilias nTLDs...
 
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.mobi failed because nowadays it has no sense with modern gadgets.
 
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.mobi failed because nowadays it has no sense with modern gadgets.
Yep. It was in trouble as soon as Apple launched its smartphone and stuck with .COM as the default. MOBI's market has shifted. It still has renewals from brand protection registrations but it anyone pitching English language domain names is going to find it far more difficult than selling the same name in .COM.

Regards...jmcc
 
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My recent US buyer (solid engineering company) said that low-mid 6F pricetag for the same .com is an absurd.
And such explanations I hear very often from the incoming endusers...
 
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Fact is there have already has been a number of failures in the new gTLD market and fact is that a number are scheduled to shut down.

Sorry to be argumentative, but this isn't fact is it? Many brand domains operated by a company only for their own purposes decided to give up using their own TLD. These are documented in a thread Kate maintains. But these are not new TLDs in the sense of this thread - i.e. in extensions anyone could register and make their website on as an individual small company.

As far as I know only a single new gTLD has "failed" (.wed) and even it is at moment still limping along in EBERO status (I think). It had a bizarre business model with $150 for year 1 and $30,000 for year 2 (really! Who thought that was smart?). It launched with a single registrar handling it, and I think only ever had 2 or 3 registrars, and only ever had a few hundred registrations. And even it is not yet non-operational.

So let's not confuse things, @MapleDots - are you talking about brand domains a company owns, and decides year by year whether to keep doing it, or are you talking about a company branding on a Google, Radix, Donuts, XYZ etc. new domain extension?

While it is true that the extensions with the most solid backing and sound business plans are most secure, but so far, and we are now 5 years into it, despite the struggles the number of new extensions which are open to anyone to register that have failed is I think 0 (but the $30,000 per year 2+ .wed is on life support).

Bob
 
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