.co $6 million wasted on .co registrations.

[snoop]

$6 million wasted on .CO registrations.

I am somewhat surprised at the level of interest in .co over the last couple of days, from bloggers claiming it is now in the "top 4 extensions" and being worth 10% of a .com to others talking about developing these names and other madness.

A few comments about .co,

1. In my view the main appeal with this extension is typo traffic. Having said that, looking at some Alexa rankings, compete scores and Google Adwords data I would say only the very best generic .co's are going to get much traffic. The registry made a calculated decision when deciding to go public. The main area is likely to be ™ names (registry passes the buck). Even then it seems the registry has done a good job connecting with big sites. Still I think the ™ typo area is the main opportunity.

2. Considering point one, that these names are totally confusing, how does it makes sense to consider developing these names names.

Would you develop a misspell?
Would you develop a .cm?
Then why would you develop a .co?

The extension is going to be totally confusing for the average person on the street. .biz would be a better choice for development.

3. Reg fees - they aren't cheap and it is going to suck out a lot of the profitability from these names. Whatever value was there is 25% of that with reg fees 4 times higher than other extensions.

4. It's different this time! Isn't it?

.ws, .cc, .tv, .biz, .info, .us, .eu, .mobi, .tel, .me.

Supposedly with every new extension it is going to be different. There is always some compelling reason or argument as to why the latest extension will succeed where other have failed. People will debate it for the next year or two.

In reality it never is different. People get excited for a few months. .co is cool and new, and the fact that nobody actuallly uses it isn't that important yet, after all there is time for growth. Then interest wanes, things turn out not quite as planned. A year later everyone is dropping. People then get angry with the registry saying a lot was promised and not delivered.

Why do the same mistakes keep getting repeated? The registry is setting people up for today, the day when they part with their money and register 200,000 .co names. Most of the money goes into the launch and promoting premium auctions. Afterwards doesn't matter much. Get ready to be strung along a lot.

6. Staged sales/usage: You've been sold to!

disrupt.co, no_url_shorteners, o.co

There is not much genuine news in this. Disrupt.co was part of an advertising deal. Did you really think techcrunch just chose to use that name? o.co, a sale that appeared a few hours before the launch, the registry is pouring some fuel on the fire here. They want to get you excited for today.

7. Who is even using this extension?

This is .mobi all over again, instead of the big backers who weren't really backing (Google, Microsoft etc) we've got 3 well known sites supposedly adopting .co (Twitter, Overstock, Techcrunch), do you think these people will be anywhere near the extension in 12 months time? How significant is this usage anyway, a url shortener? Overstock doing a url redirect to their main site? Techcrunch promoting a site for a week or so?

 

[jmcc]

Amazing that so many people still think they are experts when it comes to new TLDs and domain stats. Animator - you still haven't a clue about domain names, .com, domain statistics or how TLDs work. Merely posting some bar charts from the Verisign Domain Brief does not make you an expert. What you and a lot of other newbies don't see is the millions of domains that drop each year without being renewed. The .com of 2010 is actually a very different set of domains to the .com of 2000. Some domains are still registered and some are owned by new registrants but there is a continuing process of deletions and new registrations that most people never really see.

The most common abbreviation for Company in the UK and Ireland tends to relate to the type of company. The term 'Limited' or abbreviation 'Ltd.' is the one most used. There is also 'PLC' for public companies. As for the US, there are many different types of corporate legal structures. What about all those German companies using Gmbh? Or the French with their Sarls?

The .co is currently in its landrush period and most of the growth in these Landrush periods is speculative. The new registration volume is also far higher than usual. (I had posted a few links showing what a Landrush looks like in a new TLD (.asia) and how the first and second anniversaries of the Landrush have large deletion spikes but the post appears to have been deleted as part of some thread moderation.) The speculative activity in any landrush falls into three categories: professional, gullible and developer. With professional speculation, there is an element of risk but only high value and fast turnover domains are targeted. These guys know what they are doing and are in it purely for the money. (They will often put a lot of work into PR and ensure that the fanboy bloggers and domain fanzines cover their high value sales - it makes the other keyword domains look more valuable.) The gullible element tends to think that the new TLD is the best ever TLD since, well the last one. But they hope to make their money back on this new TLD because it is completely different from every other TLD out there and it will even be a .com killer. The developer is in it for the long haul and has plans to develop the domains rather than just sticking them on Sedo or some PPC service. They don't really pay any attention to the fanboy ramblings on the various fora, fanzines and blogs as they are too busy developing useful sites.

Regards...jmcc

 

[NLP]

2. Considering point one, that these names are totally confusing, how does it makes sense to consider developing these names.

Would you develop a misspell?
Would you develop a .cm?
Then why would you develop a .co?

What about the millions of annoying parked .COMs that are sitting and collecting dust? You're right about the newness of the extension, and the fact that it will be confusing to some, but I think the fact that there are so many undeveloped .COMs might work to .CO's advantage.

I'm surprised how many people own mid-level to premium .COMs and don't develop them. Maybe there just isn't enough time to develop everything, or they're sitting around waiting for that $XXX,XXX offer to roll in, but it's a shame.

Check out: AspenHotels(.)com, Emissions(.)com, and Steaks(.)com, for example.

.CO owners who are developing names that have well-established and fully realized .COMs will face a challenge. I mean, what's your best hope, to be ranked on the same page as them? Won't that look confusing? (And if Google marks the location for all these .COs as Colombia, that sort of ranking will be difficult anyway).

But let's say you have a .CO for a high-value .COM, that's currently sitting undeveloped. A lot of those .COM investors are busy developing other projects and managing their portfolios. If they haven't developed it in 13 years, chances are they're just going to let it sit on Sedo forever, until a huge offer comes in.

*If* you developed your .CO and spent a good year adding content and links, and slowly started getting traffic, which is better to a user in a year from now? A fully developed .CO or a stale parking page full of ads?

(Notice I did not say which is more valuable, as in sales price. .COM will clearly always win. But personally, I'm sick & tired of parked pages, even though many of my names are parked, as well. But if I had a premium name, you can bet I'd do my best to get help and develop it).

Just my .02.

There have probably been more .CO registrations than necessary, but it's a little too early to tell the future of the extension. It's only Day Two.

 

[Alex P]

Rockets generally don't last for long at all while turtles live for a long time depending on what species they are, that was a bad example you chose :P

 

[logico]

I think people are still missing the big picture, .co, is for Colombia, besides a few very very premium english keywords, the safest bet to take is to register keywords in spanish that actually mean something AND represent an industry or service, not just any random dictionary word or some badly conjugated verb.

the bad news, they are all already taken, the good news , if you know how to spot them, you might still get them not so expensively in the secondary market.

 

[JB Lions]

maybe that's what .co really stands for .co = confusion

 

[Michelle]

Ooo ok my views don't hate me :hearts:

First of all I REALLY do wish my fellow domainers lots of luck and $ in any new venture :tu:

I myself did not pre-order or register any .co

Why?

Not because I thought it bad
Not because I thought it could not be a winner
Not because I thought there was not money to be made

BUT

Because

The 500-2k names I would have registered I knew would be long gone

I did not want, and no offence meant - to just pick up a few *I just must have something in this new extention* names.


If it was a new ext (apart from maybe a tm pre-reg) it was really was a case of first come/first search/ good luck - everyone has the same chance launch.. I would have had a go

:cy:

Question

Is there going to be any money invested into advertising this new .co ext to help the new owners? To make this work.. To make people aware it is now there... I hope so

 

[Sparhawke]

That'll be better than .co or .cm for typos, I go there all the time


Who knows how the .co will work out but I do think that the majority of the best ones will have been syphoned off before the rest of us got a shot at them. I don't beleive they will ever rival .com as its just another extension based mostly on marketing & hype.

I bought one generic non-TM infringing .co as a GAMBLE and I will NOT be buying anymore unless that one is SOLD within 4 years, it's for a big ticket item so I'm going to try the "Mike Mann" approach, if you know what I mean, hey, works for him

For me it's purely a gamble but a very controlled one.



Good luck everybody, me thinks we'll need it %%-


ps - I voted for "unsure"


.

And this is the whole problem with the whole system, no one has a shot at ever getting an elite name so why should they give a damn?

I said somewhere else a few days ago that if someone who didn't set it up for their own pockets managed to get poker.co or insurance.co then it would spark a massive land-rush like never seen before. Unfortunately the register councils or whoever oversees this are a bunch of bloody idiots.

The same can be seen in the gold land rush era of California, if the bloke who had found the first chunk of gold had bought up the entire land with it there would'nt have been half the interest, because people would be working for someone else. And Los Angeles would be a hole in the ground.

The only way a land rush can work is to give EVERYONE an equal shot at the opportunities available.

Unfortunately, those running the show can only see as far as the bribes in their pockets.


~~~


And yes, if I had the funds available to invest in just a few domains then I would invest for a few domains, ones that have particular meaning and half decent search results.

Just as a punt.

 

[enlytend]

I expect it to be a haven for tm squatters and scammers alike and not much else.

And phishing - and that is, imo, what will drive the final nail into the co-ffin. The extension will get an unsavory reputation and end users will want nothing to do with it.

 

[Animator]

When .TV was making GD money it was ” a globally recognised extension”,number 2 in the drop down and Bob even had his own .TV site,then when Bob wanted a piece of the premium pie and Versign told him where to go, he could not wait to point out .TV is cctld of Tuvalu,Now .co is flavour of the month, no mention of it actually being the cctld of Columbia,and again we have another “Globally recognised extension”.

 

[Traveler]

Might? It is. It's Colombia.

And by the looks of it it will be regarded as more than just a cctld.

Colombians are used to the .com.co so just the .co may or may not be adopted by Colombians.

When you say "And by the looks of it it will be regarded as more than just a cctld"

By whom exactly? Outside of domainers, no one knows .co exists. If you try to explain the extension to someone they are going to be confused.

Imagine you are a company and you don't have the .com so you get the .co. You spend thousands on advertising your company.co... What happens, everyone goes to company.com, because nobody knows about .co.

I feel sad for anyone spending money on advertising a .co name, the traffic is going to the .com

The .co is great, but it is to late in the game.

 

[hawkeye]

I have to disagree with this point. I believe the need for an alternative is huge and long over due. The need was created by the growth of the .com. How many .com names have you see that have a number or letter at the beginning or end of keywords? I see it all the time.

So tell us 'why' .co is the extension that is an 'alternative' for .com please. And, why it would be more-so an alternative than any other extension, especially as people have been able to use 'any other' extension as an alternative up to now?! Is it because the world has been 'waiting' for that special 'certain' new cctld to arrive, and will 'know' it's going to be an 'alternative' to .com? It's just another extension, that is available to reg what one can, sell what one can, and develop what one can. To think it's going to be 'the next great extension', is simply another case of 'New Extension Grand Illusionment'.

The funny part about all the .co chearleading and chearleaders, is that if you look closely, one can notice that 75%+ of them, are new to the forums, and more than likely new to domaining. But they 'know' .co will be a great success. (Will they share some stock tips with us too??)

 

[vlad74]

I think this extention, like .co, .tv, .cc, .pro and other exotic extentions, is waste of money for regular domainers. Registrars are making money, not ordinary people registering domains in exotic zones. Some domains will sell, but you had to be at the beginning of the que to get one or few of top 1000 names.

Furthermore, renewals of $25-$30, i.e. 4 times the .com or .net annual fee, renewal costs will bite in the pockets of domainers with big .co portfolios.

I think in a year we will see a large step back in the number of registered .co domains.

Many people are saying .com is king. It is the fact of the last ten, twenty years. It will be the same for the years ahead. The more extensions will come to the market, the more valuable will the the dotcom.

Dotcom is unique, whereas all other "great" extensions - .tv, .pro, .cc, .mobi, already existing for many years, are just any other extensions used by endusers wanting to save money by not purchasing occupied .com, .net, .org domain and rather registering the desired names in exotic zones. Thus even if there are potential endusers will be considering .co domains, that are the endusers who what to save few additional bucks. People with money will not go for .co, they will go for gTLD. And domainers invested in .co will be in a pretty bad situation where occasional sales will not cover even the fraction of the .co portfolio's rebewal costs.

All above is my opinion, I might be right or wrong. The time will show.

 

[snoop]

My typo .co's are doing GREAT!

Any examples?

From what I can see of it the people who registered from that angle are mainly not doing well, and that is people experienced in the typo traffic game,

eg,

domainstryker.com/co-domain-auctions - I’ll pass on those .co auctions… KTHX

Has there been any .co listed for sale as having revenue? I am yet to see any.

Personally I thought there would be a good typo angle in this, though it looks to be more limited than I thought.

 

[XDuncan]

i hope you reg'd soothsayer.co cuz you seem very confident that you can see the future.

I've witnessed the land-rushes of many extensions over the years. There is a reason that most veterans did not pick up a single .co.

 

[Kate]

And in Colombia? S.A.

Luckily though, .CO also means Colombia so they're lucky in that respect.

:zzz:

Bingo. SA is also used in other countries including France (société anonyme).
So all we need is Saudi Arabia to release the 2nd level, and no doubt we have the successor to .com (after .co of course) :lol:

 

[firefly]

Haven't checked this thread for a while and now that I have, I have come to the conclusion that reality is an illusion created by a lack of drugs which means I probably picked the wrong week to stop sniffing glue...lol :D

These threads always, without fail, turn into something beyond surreal.

 

[Reppy]

It's not like .co is a completely foreign concept, look at .co.uk, .co.za and .co.nz... Brits, South Africans and New Zealanders are already used to typing in .co. Perhaps there will be typo traffic for popular sites with these ccTLD extensions by leaving off the .uk, .za and .nz. Or maybe they also might accidentally type in .co instead of .com.

Co is also the abbreviation for Company in a lot of countries.

A lot of people can get caught up in the excitement or hype, but most of them would fall for anything. Or try and sell the most idiotic names. But those with their heads screwed on will benefit. Be it short term or long term.

For me I'm happy with what I got. I do a lot of content writing and had been thinking about doing a blog about drums and drumming. Suffice to say the shorter appropriate names in .com's were well and truly gone. So it's a good opportunity for me. I'm not in it for quick money. Once my blog is consistent and established I'll introduce Adsense ads. I'm in no rush.

 

[mwzd]

snoop, didn't get any of the .co koolaid?

Seems a lot of self proclaimed 'domain kings' have been touting this as the next big thing due to the fact that they got most of the top commercial keywords WAY before the registrations were even open. :p

Shocking. :lol:

 

[DNProperty.com]

Couldn't agree more..

There is a reason why ccTld's are catching on versus other extensions (cctlds have a specific purpose that makes sense).

In this case, it will make sense if the sites are for Colombia, no one in the right mind will use .co extension to compete as a .com. Also, how will Google, Bing treat this extension...they will have to treat it as a Colombia country code (I would imagine)

We are essentially talking about holding on to see if there is any trickle down traffic from other .co.cctlds primarily.

I expect a lot of drops at the end of the year...

I am somewhat surprised at the level of interest in .co over the last couple of days, from bloggers claiming it is now in the "top 4 extensions" and being worth 10% of a .com to others talking about developing these names and other madness.

A few comments about .co,

1. In my view the main appeal with this extension is typo traffic. Having said that, looking at some Alexa rankings, compete scores and Google Adwords data I would say only the very best generic .co's are going to get much traffic. The registry made a calculated decision when deciding to go public. The main area is likely to be ™ names (registry passes the buck). Even then it seems the registry has done a good job connecting with big sites. Still I think the ™ typo area is the main opportunity.

2. Considering point one, that these names are totally confusing, how does it makes sense to consider developing these names names.

Would you develop a misspell?
Would you develop a .cm?
Then why would you develop a .co?

The extension is going to be totally confusing for the average person on the street. .biz would be a better choice for development.

3. Reg fees - they aren't cheap and it is going to suck out a lot of the profitability from these names. Whatever value was there is 25% of that with reg fees 4 times higher than other extensions.

4. It's different this time! Isn't it?

.ws, .cc, .tv, .biz, .info, .us, .eu, .mobi, .tel, .me.

Supposedly with every new extension it is going to be different. There is always some compelling reason or argument as to why the latest extension will succeed where other have failed. People will debate it for the next year or two.

In reality it never is different. People get excited for a few months. .co is cool and new, and the fact that nobody actuallly uses it isn't that important yet, after all there is time for growth. Then interest wanes, things turn out not quite as planned. A year later everyone is dropping. People then get angry with the registry saying a lot was promised and not delivered.

Why do the same mistakes keep getting repeated? The registry is setting people up for today, the day when they part with their money and register 200,000 .co names. Most of the money goes into the launch and promoting premium auctions. Afterwards doesn't matter much. Get ready to be strung along a lot.

6. Staged sales/usage: You've been sold to!

disrupt.co, no_url_shorteners, o.co

There is not much genuine news in this. Disrupt.co was part of an advertising deal. Did you really think techcrunch just chose to use that name? o.co, a sale that appeared a few hours before the launch, the registry is pouring some fuel on the fire here. They want to get you excited for today.

7. Who is even using this extension?

This is .mobi all over again, instead of the big backers who weren't really backing (Google, Microsoft etc) we've got 3 well known sites supposedly adopting .co (Twitter, Overstock, Techcrunch), do you think these people will be anywhere near the extension in 12 months time? How significant is this usage anyway, a url shortener? Overstock doing a url redirect to their main site? Techcrunch promoting a site for a week or so?

 

[bmugford]

.CO should do fine as a solid ccTLD, but that is about it. Let's face it, .CO can not deliver on the hype. The main interest is typo related.

The fact is most generic .COM do not get much traffic to start with, at least to support a typo that might happen 1/1000 times. So basically what is left is a TLD perfect for TM squatting and phishing.

The best terms were already off the market at launch. They are all in the hands of a limited number of people which will kill the market for potential development.

I think the obvious promotion of some major domainers and organizations is more of a PR campaign based on self interest instead of an objective view.

Developing a .CO and driving more traffic to the .COM would be a terrible idea. If you think traffic loss developing a .NET was bad, this would dwarf it.

I think a major problem is many domainers just look at domains through domainer glasses. Without wide end user adoption and awareness any new TLD will fail. This is not a gTLD, it is a ccTLD with a big marketing campaign behind it, that is it.

If the "Company" aspect was going to be a key selling point, then .TV would be far more popular. TV is an acronym that is just as well know in the world.

Let's not forget there is another typo that might be coming in the near future as well - .OM (Oman)

Brad

 

[Animator]

The problem with gTLDs is that the registry can create an infinite amount of extensions like .net .org .mobi .info .travel .gov .cat i mean what's next ? .cow ? .pig ? .web ?

ccTLDs on the other hands are limited to 2 letters long and the most successful ones depends on the country population and popularity like .in .us .eu .jp or the extension's meaning like .co .tv .me .ws

.cm and .om are meaningless.

 

[DNProperty.com]

The verdict will be in soon, when people realize the amount of type in traffic they are getting.

It shouldn't be more than a month to get a very good idea of traffic.

The good thing is we are coming to an end of such speculative domain extensions based on typos .cm, .cc, .co....

 

[doubleU]

My guess is the .Co novelty will be downsized with the release of custom TLD's over the next few years although the best keywords and a small number of typo's will survive.

The rest will drop like flies especially if the reg fees remain high.

 

[Animator]

My guess is the .Co novelty will be downsized with the release of custom TLD's over the next few years although the best keywords and a small number of typo's will survive.

The rest will drop like flies especially if the reg fees remain high.

.CO is shorter then .COM .NET .ORG .WEB .TEL .MOBI .INFO .CAT .TRAVEL .SPACE .MOON