50 companies changed their .COM to a new gTLD

[Fancy.domains]

Hello,

An article with examples of companies using a new gTLD, rather than its original .COM address:

http://blog.europeandomaincentre.com/why-50-websites-dumped-com-for-new-tld/

 

[JB Lions]

Hello,

An article with examples of companies using a new gTLD, rather than its original .COM address:

http://blog.europeandomaincentre.com/why-50-websites-dumped-com-for-new-tld/

Very misleading title, try 29. Checked some of them. Some rinky dink sites, some fisherman, some life coach, some will change back to their .com in the future. Some had bad ones and just changed them for another bad one.

 

[mad409]

@JB

I understand you are intensely dedicated to .com but the link obviously points out 50 site's that have changed.

Moving back to .com is your conjecture, nothing more.

Maybe you can predict the future but it's too early to tell.

 

[pdevananth]

New gTld investors should understand the mentality of VIP domainers..

For example:

You are a .com investor (VIP) and bought BuyShares.com for $17k hoping after 5 years it will sell for $50k

Lets say after one year they are launching .shares and Buy.Shares is available at a premium price of $500.

What will you do now?

Will you go to every nGtld thread and write ".com is the king" or not? Irrespective of thread context...because your 17k is in risk now...

Buy.Shares
BuyShares.com
BuyShares.xyz
BuyShares.web

After 5 years, last 3 might look similar and their price too....

Generation changes
From BuyShares.blogspot.com
BuyShares.com
Buy.Shares

 

[namezest]

Personally I think new gTLD's will never gain any decant publicity and value, yes maybe there are and will be small amount of diamonds discovered in the mud (the ones that sound and go together just perfectly) few end users (companies) will try to use them and maybe, 1 - 2 % will actually stick with them. For the rest IMHO, it's like trying to change driving sides on the road in UK and (former British colonies) from left to right, or in pretty much rest of the world right to left! Unlikely to happen, is it?.. People are just so used to .com you would have to spend huge amounts of money on marketing and telling people who are not domainers, what those new gTLD's actually are and why are they better, than .com?

I can't predict future and would be happy to be proven wrong of course

Again in my opinion most often, people who believe that pretty much all of the new gTLD will be huge are mostly guy who had gone in to domaining recently, obviously missed out on reasonable chance on picking up good .com for cheap so all there is left to do to try convince others that all the new gTLD's will make them crazy money

@Miks I liked your post but I'm from the UK live in the USA and have to give my opinion here... Sorry can't help it.
You do realize that most dot coms are actually owned by people going by the term domainer etc.
Some are making money others are just spending money on what they think is good (as you kind of said) however..... If most dot coms are owned by domainers and let's face it that means it is domainers who are also buying the majority of the new gTLDs right? .xyz anybody? Dirt cheap buy hundreds then watch the numbers fall come renewal time. ( I have not touched .xyz btw.)
So that can only mean one thing..... It is not news that the ".COM Bubble Burst" how can an ambiguous combination of LLL or LLLL be worth more than a nice fresh name? The domain name can be masked from any old garbage and people mainly click on links rather than type, due to search engines (those will change too) it is probably domainers that do the majority of type in traffic to start off with as they do their searching for a gold nugget.
Younger people are not into dot com it's all apps and facebook etc. and fb will eventually die off.
people always want something new whether it's a tv or car or phone, and the net is going to change.
Cloud is just a way to rebrand the net it's nothing new LOL. So if you buy any of the three mentioned items (tv, car,phone) eventually you'll want a new one. The old one will end up given away. sold or hidden in a draw. Whatever the case the majority of these things will lose the majority of it's value.

This being said a domain is supposed to hold its value, well it should.... IF there are only a few extensions but a few extensions means a limited quantity. Rather only a limited quantity of "Quality" domains.
This can only mean bad news for some or let's say most! I will say it if no one else will. Being told to hold on to a thing because it is rare is stupidity it is only worth holding on to if it is "GOOD" if people want it... Where am I going with this? Well basically it is domainers telling domainers to do that (keep rare character counts) as the domains cost domainers (the middle men) money! The real domainers are the registrars and the new domain extensions are making the real domainers LOTS of money. Why? Because some quality domains did exist and those domainers sold them and used the money to buy the better names and then went one step further and set up shop as ..... A NEW EXTENSION.... Now some great domains do exist and yes some things have not been invented yet, so you may have a frenzied rush to buy up all possible combinations when the next "New Thing" comes out, in effect it is like a lottery. Dictionary words especially the most common are the most valuable yet not all are any good!
So there you have it and as I said before "Taxonomy" is starting to take effect from big data and let's face it .com is old tree menu stuff albeit the top of that tree (domains). So yes some dot coms will be worth lots but the best way to make money is to invent a thing or develop your own thing and then sell it. I will write more about what I see coming when I have time. Sorry for the ramble here guys but I had to say it.

 

[Fancy.domains]

New generations are coming. New ideas, new tactics, new thoughts.

But I don't understand why Paris Fashion Week replaced their .COM with a BUZZ. Are they sponsored?

 

[Fancy.domains]

Some other large corporations will soon switch their .COM for their own TLD.

 

[briguy]

@JB

I understand you are intensely dedicated to .com but the link obviously points out 50 site's that have changed.

In all fairness (equal time), where is the link that obviously points out the million sites that didn't change?

Agreed some of them were changes for the better like:

pa-law-firm.com becoming Williamsport.lawyer (double hyphen law firm to .lawyer)
Futurelegends.me.uk becoming Futurelegends.cricket (a cricket site that teaches kids how to improve their cricket skills, vast improvement in branding)
fishtetons.com becoming Wyoming.fish (keyword)
ugr.es becomingUgr.university (it is a University after all)
esnfpatientcare.com becoming Triple.care (keyword and mobile friendlier)
animalhealthassociates.org becoming Aha.vet (mobile friendlier)

 

[Miks]

Personally I think new gTLD's will never gain any decant publicity and value, yes maybe there are and will be small amount of diamonds discovered in the mud (the ones that sound and go together just perfectly) few end users (companies) will try to use them and maybe, 1 - 2 % will actually stick with them. For the rest IMHO, it's like trying to change driving sides on the road in UK and (former British colonies) from left to right, or in pretty much rest of the world right to left! Unlikely to happen, is it?.. People are just so used to .com you would have to spend huge amounts of money on marketing and telling people who are not domainers, what those new gTLD's actually are and why are they better, than .com?

I can't predict future and would be happy to be proven wrong of course

Again in my opinion most often, people who believe that pretty much all of the new gTLD will be huge are mostly guy who had gone in to domaining recently, obviously missed out on reasonable chance on picking up good .com for cheap so all there is left to do to try convince others that all the new gTLD's will make them crazy money

 

[Fancy.domains]

For the rest IMHO, it's like trying to change driving sides on the road in UK and (former British colonies) from left to right, or in pretty much rest of the world right to left! Unlikely to happen, is it?

Maybe brits are "too" conservative. In Sweden they changed from left to right in 1967. In all went rather smooth (my father's story, I wasn't born).

Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dagen_H

On topic: I sold my first .COM in 1998 and I sold my first new gTLD in 2004. It doesn't have to be .COM versus/or gTLDs, it can be both. For some.

 

[gustave]

Guys, you're right, don't buy new gtlds, they suck, let them all available for us

 

[brandnow]

This thread is funny because it's basically back and forth.. .com is king.. but ngtlds are good too... .com is king.. but ngtlds are good too!... but .com will always be THE KING!... but ngtlds are good!!! etc.etc.

 

[Potential.Domains]

....Change usually happens when something better comes along, some advancement etc. There is none here. These are more options when you can't get a decent .com, not a replacement. .com is too well known and used, way too far ahead. Even it's closest competitor, .net isn't even at 13% of regs. There is not going to be any changing on who is #1, the only possible shuffling will be in the lower ranks.

I have to say this, JB: Your argument against newgtlds makes no sense, and is mostly based on the opinions of a domainer stuck in the dot-com space.

So, a small, mid, large-size business, or people, should only register domains based on the popularity of strings? Disregarding their meaningfulness or representation? Funny!!

If you are a farmer, are you going to buy land for farming based on the popularity of the area, or the quality of soil (fertility)?

Are you going to go into business based on the popularity of the over-saturated market or based on the profitability of the market among other factors?

Not everyone does things based on popularity, and you ought to change from your one-sided point of view.

And why the aggressive comparison of newgtlds to dot-com? Dotcom has no meaning but will always be favored by many or some, for its commonness. But newgtlds, which are meaningful, will always be favored for what they represent.

You are the type that would probably pay $100k for JBfitness.com for example, when you can register JB.fitness for less than $30.

You cannot predict the future and consumer behaviors, which are always changing as technology changes.

 

[sOliver]

Think people forgot that .com means commercial? Yes commercial is a term for business but it is also a term for advertising which is probably it's real meaning. Because before internet it was called BBS - Bulletin Board System. To a new generation .computer? .whatever .etc. .CLOUD? .falseadvertising .payperclick .adsense .keyword .ripoff .insane .maybe all the new extensions are really just another way for the owners of the mega expensive .coms to try to recoup the lost money they spent on those dot coms or make more because of their fame in the domain sales world? In any case after you really look, check the name sales history in the dot com and look at the new extension name.... So if that is the case that has to be bad news and a clear indicator of a very important and basic fact for a domain to really be worth anything content, content, content = users, members, income. Not oh google says this or that (seo) google will say anything to take your money and big sites will allow anything to be advertised so long as they make money? Half of those adverts are false advertising that has to hurt a domain especially when you have screen shots of your so called investment on way back machine, that probably has links to bogus sites via pay per click advertising because of cash parking, that really is not protecting your investment is it? Just some food for thought. But you know I am right investors do background checks on domains now just like employers do potential staff members.

Wrong assumption, COM stands for COMPANY. Back then the internet was not commercialized. COM was always supposed to be an extension for companies not for commerce. Google it if you don't believe me but theres a lot of wrong information too.

COM has so much value because of its recognition. You can't take that away. When I enter "namepros.com" into a browser, it's actually short for "namepros.company". Or when I enter namepros.co into a browser, guess what, it's short for namepros.company. Only consumers dont know that. They only know what DOT COM is. They know it will lead them to an "established" website. And that trust can be turned into sales. That's why businesses invest millions, because they know they can at least expect a positive ROI and the asset will not lose any value!

gTLDs are unproven. Positive ROI is not a guarantee. BUT with new gTLDs, one important thing will come into play again. Exact match queries. No one would search for "namepros company", but people search for "moving company" or similar keywords. That's why names like transfer.money, commercial.property or luxury.estate sold for what they did. It's shorter than commercialproperty.co or transfermoney.co. Yet they only fetched like 50k-100k because they are brand new names and unproven. It's great to set yourself apart from the competition, that's why people invest into new gTLDs TODAY, because they understand that DOT COM will not always be the only trusted domain extension there is.

Many extensions will fail, but some like .club, .nyc, .tips, .web may thrive, which can drive up the value of other extensions like money or estate. They will co-exist with DOT COM. INFO was the only viable gTLD out there for a long time and its not the greatest term, but other short terms make a lot of sense and will be valued by companies for what they are. Terms that possibly describe their business better than a DOT COM ever could. Why invest 100k into wine.club? For nothing? Or because you believe the ROI will be greater than that and you can't afford the 10 million for wine.com? Plus, consumers will still believe I'm a heck of a deal with a strong organic name like that.

Imho, 25% of all domain sales will be gTLDs in the next 5 years. We're already at 25% NON-COM sales now (based on reported numbers by holding companies which include ccTLD and other extensions like me,co, etc).

Everyone who says DOT COM will be the only successful extension is blinded. We don't know that yet. COM is just an abbreviation for company. Same as CO. CO is a great extension with many sales, but why hasn't it annihilated COM? Because it doesn't have the recognition. It hasn't been around for 30 years (1985), only 5+ (2010). That matters. Age matters.

Consumers are just waking up to the fact that we now can have names like tech.news .. and it will take time before they accept it. That's why I believe the most important thing right now for any gTLD investor is that Google changes google.com to search.google or similar - when that happens gTLDs have momentum. I believe sales will skyrocket for a while and then find a plateau somewhere. They will happily co-exist with DOT COM.

What I find interesting is that some gTLDs are already seeing typein traffic. Just imagine what it would be like when people start entering newyork.apartments or newyork.insurance or newyork.bars into their browser instead of apartments.com or insurance.com or bars.com. When we're at that stage and those names see real traffic from real consumers then we know that new gTLDs have succeeded and businesses will start paying premium prices for names with traffic. That's how DOT COMs got started. People were coming to website.com or restaurant.com by entering it into the address bar. Rick Schwartz made a killing from typein traffic. That's why DOT COMs have so much value too. They are not only trusted, they are considered the 'norm' (the default choice), but when consumers get used to typing in watch.youtube, what do you think will happen?

Speculate on the outcome of what happens when Google will start using its 42+ extensions (.google, .youtube, .play, .dev, .foo, .mov and so on) and make a decision whether you want to participate or not. Google have already publicly stated they will start using the extensions in late 2015.

I understand why DOT COM investors dont want them to succeed because it will hurt their negotiations and they lose a great deal of leverage. They have already lost leverage because many businesses dont want to or simply cannot afford to spend 1 million or even 20k for a domain. They go elsewhere and now they can like never before. That's the real value of new gTLDs. Liberation - and it does hurt DOT COM owners, not necessarily owners of names like Malls.com or Teamwork.com but owners of names like NewYorkDentist.com, OhioRealEstate.com, ... those names may lose in value because price is always driven by supply and demand. There's more supply now (alternatives) and less demand for DOT COM domains (by small businesses and startups who are already using DOT CO or DOT IO in hordes).

I would happily buy Mindmap.io, Accounting.io, TaxSoftware.co and take my chances with that. Ask yourself, if you owned a business what would you do? Buy a DOT COM for 20k or buy a DOT CO,IO,WEB,ESTATE for a lot less? I'm a business owner and I know what I'd do if I lacked the funds and needed a quick ROI to get my business started. There are more startups and new companies than established companies and they are generating a lot of demand that used to drive up prices.

However, I also understand brand development and when I am really serious about building a long-term business and have the required funds, well then i'd invest into a COM or a NET any day and have done so in the past myself. The recognition and trust of DOT COM and NET will allow me to safe a great deal of money in the future and that's worth it to me.

CONCLUSIONS (if you dont want to read entire block):

• COM stands for company not commercial, eCommerce was not established back then, but an extension for companies was required in some way
• Startups are increasingly going elsewhere and have more options now
• DOT COM owners lose SOME leverage during negotiation when dealing with small business owners and startups
• New gTLDs are getting early type-in traffic.
• Consumers could get used to entering phrases like watch.youtube, search.google, pay.barclays. When that happens, they may also start searching for nyc.apartments, boston.apartments, nyc.bars, nightclub.nyc, donuts.nyc, restaurant.nearme, bikeshop.where, bike.shop, ....
• GEO domains and popular exact match keywords may become winners in this new market
• New Google algorithm could play huge role and is a wildcard in all of this. You just never know with Google, they change directions very often. Right now brands are the answer but then a smart Google SEO may come along and say they could drive more organic traffic by ranking new gTLDs differently and voilà you have a completely new industry. And I'd bet Donuts Co is already sending out its lobbyists.

It's safe to assume that small businesses and registry operators are the big winners of this war. At the moment we can only speculate and make guesses. Nothing is set in stone.

 

[JB Lions]

"What's important to businesses" as it relates to choice of TLDs is another topic of its own. And you can't speak for, or on behalf of every business. Neither you or I, know anything about other business' objectives or choice when it comes to the online identity of their business. .....

Actually, I can because it's common sense stuff here. Would you rather be on a known extension, where there isn't any guessing on whether it'll be successful or not or one where most can't even hit 10,000 regs. One where if you get, like your name, can be confusing to customers and they end up going to the .com anyway. Or one of the many other reasons gone thru before. Again, the question you ask, doesn't matter because it doesn't come up in conversation when choosing what extension to go with. "This has already been answered by another member." And I gave you the correct answer, the keywords that come before the dot is what counts. Use my examples and tell me how they don't have meaning, you can't. Hotels.com doesn't have meaning?

New gTLDs have security advantages, branding advantages and meaning..

Oh really?

DiscountShoes.com vs. Discount.Shoes

How is the second more secure?

How does it have more meaning than the first?

How does it have branding advantage over something known?

Try to advertise discount.shoes and you'll have people going to discountshoes.com. Advertise discountshoes.com, do you think somebody will go to discount.shoes? No. That's called a disadvantage when you confuse customers. It's a disadvantage when you try to build on an extension that most people have never heard of, will have low reg numbers which means low market penetration, means you'll have a harder time trying to get people to get your name right etc.

 

[Kate]

But you are ignoring hard facts: New gTLDs have security advantages, branding advantages and meaning.

What kind of security advantages ? I don't see any.
But I see a lot of problems with new extensions

• they are often more expensive
• they are not recognized by consumers and confusing
  
• the best keywords are hoarded/auctioned by the registries
• worse, the registries claw back on domains granted 'by mistake'
  
• and you don't know if they will still exist in a few years

is this what you call security ?

What that means is that there will be a secondary market.

There will be no secondary market where there is no primary market. Or does 2 sales a year count as a market ?

 

[JB Lions]

David beats Goliath sometimes.

Nobody is going to beat .com which almost has 118,000,000 regs, and growing, nobody. It's a basic looking at the numbers. I've asked this many times before and not 1 person could give me the extension that could do it. Not sure why some of you keep putting up this no win scenario, it just makes you look silly. Niche extensions by definition can't, so what's left are generics and most to this point suck. The only one that has the possibility of doing any real numbers is .web and even with that, I don't think they ever get past .net.

Not sure what .bank has to do with anything since it's not something you're going to be regging and selling. So if a few use it, so what.

If the conversation was more, some businesses might use some of these here and there, ok. Of course, that's nothing new. Businesses from time to time have used alternate extensions. .com is still going to be far and away the #1 extension, being used, being sold, in demand etc.

Was curious, so I checked

This year so far, 90/100 top sales were .com
http://www.dnjournal.com/ytd-sales-charts.htm

I picked a random year from the past to see what it was, 2008

It was 81/100 .com, so this year is even better than the past

http://www.dnjournal.com/archive/domainsales/2008/ytd-sales-chart-2008.htm

 

[MarkedMarket]

There are only a limited amount of new gTLDs that are available (e.g. - .research does not exist for some reason), so for all logically sounding 1, 2, 3 or 4 word phrases for which there is no available gTLD, the .com extension remains the preference in my view. Statistically this would mean that .com would still remain the dominant extension, since there are far more words in the English dictionary than only those that are part of the new gTLD program.

Moreover, a lot of the gTLDs will likely not make it in my view. Which respectible organization or person wants his products or services to be associated with a .suchs extension? It might only be a one-off joke for a certain occasion and some brands might be able to use it for a special campaign, but in general suchs.suchs in my view. And there are many other extensions with similar or different problems. E.g. I personally like .expert more than .guru - but they have more or less the same meaning. So I would expect that one of the 2 will become redundant.

So only a very limited subset of the new gTLD program could/would in my view make sense. We all know the intuitive 2 word phrases (e.g. beach.club, property.investments, etc) that are very easy to remember, as there is no need to remember on which extension (.com, .net, .org., etc.) they end.

So I think there is certainly room for certain gTLDs, but that it will remain very difficult to challenge .com, simply because .com has the seniority/credibility that they built up over 30 years and because the .com extension makes sense for almost all letter/word combinations.

 

[cocaseco]

After thinking about this i think the issue is that we lump anyone doing "business" into the same bucket. For the big companies those that advocate the position of "Com is King" are absolutely right. These companies can afford to experiment, change course, keep 30 domains up and running etc. But for the smaller business they can't afford to do this. They may not be able to afford or justify a prime dot com, so for them a GTLD may be the perfect answer. plus, the very nature of being a small business usually implies dynamic, nimble and willing to take more risks. So they go with gTLD's. I definitely am in the market of small to micro businesses myself and the one or two man shop (a micro business) is fully ready to adopt and use a prime gTLD that they think adequately reflects their business and shows that they are willing to adopt new ideas.

 

[4better]

The only permanent thing in the world is change.
Everything changes and nothing stands still.
This is the basic reality of life...

 

[JB Lions]

Those two quotes about "change" were not mine but rather came from the famous Greek philosopher Heraclitus. As each and everybody else is entitled to his or her own opinion, it is my belief that Heraclitus statement is totally convincing for me. And perhaps the world as well...

I believe in .com as the king but then no king remains permanent. Sooner or later, any king for that matter will have to be changed. At present, .com reigns and will continue to reign for sometime. As to how long, that remains to be seen. But I firmly believe it can never be permanent.

There will always be people who will go for a change and there will also be other people who will remain in their comfort zones. But I believe that those people who opt for changes are the ones who will succeed in life. From the ancient history up to the present times, a great deal of change has evolved. Society will never be like this if there has been no change in all aspects of our lives. Technology changes and even domaining could not escape from the wide shackles of change. Others like the change while others simply dislike it. Everybody has his/her own reason depending on the benefit, comfortability and conviction.

Now here comes 50 companies who opted for a change in their domain extensions. Just by the message of each domainer here one can feel the reaction, the impression and the feelings extended to those companies who are bold enough to take the drastic change of modifying their domain extensions from the "king" to virtually unknown gtlds. And the way things are going on, these new gtlds are gradually creeping their way inside the domain world. It's because there are companies and individuals who are willing to make a change. There will always be starters. There will be success and there will also be failures. But that's basically how change revolves. When one fails or commits a mistake, necessary steps are done to correct it and to change it. Change something to make it better. How does one feel living in a highly urbanized technological world today? This is simply the effect of the wonders of "change".

It's more of the same. Some of you are living off some quote that has nothing to do with this, at all. You don't make an argument with some quote, you can find quotes on anything. Change isn't always the same thing as progress. That change saying gets used a lot or ridiculous comparisons like

.com = early cell phones
new gtlds = today's smartphones

Let's come back to reality for a second. One thing you guys could never tell me, is which extension is supposed to take the crown from .com? Are you aware of the numbers? A niche extension can never be greater than a general extension, by definition alone. So what general extensions are there that can compete? xyz? link? clink? Nope. Stop looking at quotes, look at numbers, reality. .com is pushing 118 million, so who is going to beat that. .net was the next closest general extension and it's 103 million regs behind. Think about that.

 

[zycfour]

The "Chinese" domains were a good move especially since all Chinese domains will be required to be in "ALL" Chinese characters in the next few years per the requirement of the Chinese gov, so there goes the Chinese market...

I'm a Chinese domainer and I know we don't like "Chinese" domains AT ALL. It's very complicated to type, you have to shift the input method at least twice.
Behind "周杰伦.中文网" is: zhoujielun "space to confirm" "change input method to English" "dot" "change input method back to Chinese" zhongwenwang "space to confirm".
However, I have thought of that, when one day, the Chinese input method gets improved and more domain name friendly. Chinese domains could have a market here, for end-users whose business is only in China.

 

[Kate]

I have to say this, JB: Your argument against newgtlds makes no sense, and is mostly based on the opinions of a domainer stuck in the dot-com space.

What he says is factual: new TLDs bring nothing new, they work just like old TLDs. They are not superior technology. Domain extensions are Internet infrastructure, like the decade-old protocols. So they tend to be stable.

You are the type that would probably pay $100k for JBfitness.com for example, when you can register JB.fitness for less than $30.

I wouldn't pay 100K for this, but I would find another .com that is within my budget.
I find your reasoning to be somewhat blindfolded: while it is true that you will save money on the initial acquisition, branding will cost a lot more in the long run, not to mention confusion.
A good domain works for you. A bad domain drags you down. You must promote it, not the other way round.

On top of that, there is no guarantee that .fitness (your example) will still exist in 5 years.
I guarantee you that some string will be phased out due to lack of profitability. The questions is when, and which ones.
But everybody is free to volunteer as an unpaid guinea pig....

 

[sOliver]

Unless I completely missed your point in the above statement; can you or anyone in the community, explain how "Com" is meaningful?

Take into consideration, "Com" is not TV, Club, Website, News, and other meaningful extensions.

That's a really good point many domainers miss. COM is an abbreviation, whereas most new gTLDs like DOT TIPS are not.

In my opinion, meaningful, short names will survive like: tips, web, club, me, site, estate, news, today, ..

We'll have to wait and see how annoying consumers will find it to type in long extensions, but then again type-in traffic is rare and SEO is the way to drive traffic these days. That's when people realize there is actually more value in owning a .COMPANY name or a .TIPS domain name rather than a COM for certain business models like lead generation. For SEO work it's just brilliant.

 

[JB Lions]

can you or anyone in the community, explain how "Com" is meaningful?

Because it's well known, accepted, used. It has a history of success and a future. There is a reason why it sells for what it does. There is a reason why it gets 19 out of the top 20 sales - http://www.dnjournal.com/domainsales.htm

So what do all these people and companies get, that a lot of domainers don't? Why do you think these new gtlds have been underperforming? Not hitting ICAANs earlier predictions, not meeting individual new extensions predictions?

That's a really good point many domainers miss. COM is an abbreviation, whereas most new gTLDs like DOT TIPS are not.

That's something new I've been thinking about. Another way to look at it is, .com looks like a url, the others look like run on sentences. You say, they have meanings because they're words, as if words don't come before the .com.

That's yet another tired argument a lot of you guys make. It's an abbreviation or it doesn't mean anything etc. Let's pretend it hasn't been working or straight dominant.