.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?

 

[gazzip]

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

Brad

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"


.

 

[Kate]

gTLDs can create infinite numbers of extensions while ccTLDs are limited to 195 countries and out of those 195 counties only 4 have meaningful extension .CO .TV .ME .US

What are you talking about. New gTLDs cannot be created without icann approval.

.CO is glowing at rocket speed while .COM as been growing slowly by age like a turtle.

In 5 years i expect .CO to kill .ORG and .NET or reach the same level as .COM

Yeah right...

 

[JB Lions]

.com is just too ingrained with people

Another way to look at it is

let's say .com is the brand, .co is brand confusion That's why it won't work when it comes to branding. The other ones that Google ok for international use are actually words people use everyday, TV and ME. CO?

It'll only be good for SEO/SERPS. Like a lot of other extensions out there. And what's been mentioned already, some typos for a very low percentage.

Besides SERPS, why would you try to brand a .co when what you'll really be doing is driving traffic to the .com counterpart.

 

[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.

 

[bmugford]

.com is just too ingrained with people
let's say .com is the brand, .co is brand confusion That's why it won't work when it comes to branding.

Here are the results you get when you search Google for the following -

CreditCard.co
"Did you mean: creditcards.com"

Fish.co
"Did you mean: fish.com"

Denver.co
"Did you mean: denver.org"

And the list goes on. The brand confusion of this extension will be massive. What major company is going to develop a website on the Colombian ccTLD or a .COM typo? It will just drive traffic to the .COM

I have seem many people type .COM instead of .CO already. CO is a major uphill battle.

Brad

 

[JB Lions]

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

 

[Animator]

.CO is the evolution of .COM

It's 1/3 times faster to type.

You will go instinct.

Here are the results you get when you search Google for the following -

CreditCard.co
"Did you mean: creditcards.com"

Fish.co
"Did you mean: fish.com"

Denver.co
"Did you mean: denver.org"

And the list goes on. The brand confusion of this extension will be massive. What major company is going to develop a website on the Colombian ccTLD or a .COM typo? It will just drive traffic to the .COM

I have seem many people type .COM instead of .CO already. CO is a major uphill battle.

Brad

 

[bmugford]

It is amazing how many newbies enter the picture when a new extension arrives and think they are experts. It has happened every time in past as well.

The vast majority of them leave when renewals are up at the end of the first year and they realize their investments are not the gold mine they hoped they were sitting on.

Even if .CO were to take off it is only for great terms, not half of the garbage I have seen regged. Before yesterday started everything amazing was pretty much already taken.

Brad

 

[Kate]

When you think of it, domaining is a strange activity. There is always something going on, landrush here, auction there, OMG new extension .#### is out - buzz buzz buzz (buy buy buy !).
In the end very few people seem to have the right approach to capitalize on that.
I think there is a limited window of opportunity in .co, as long as you do not indulge in wishful thinking, or buy the hype.

 

[Animator]

^

.comers never evolve.

 

[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

 

[DotUSDomains]

This is all you need to read, to see what will happen.

Domain Name Wire » News » The Lifecyle of a Top Level Domain Fanboy - The Domain Industry's News Source

the best post i have ever read

 

[x3sphere]

ccTLDs are a growing market so I don't feel money is 'wasted' on them, as long as you stick to premium or country-specific keywords. However, anyone that thinks .CO will eventually compete with generic extensions is fooling themselves. Serious businesses will not use .CO as it can easily be mistaken for .COM. I'll admit, I've already mistyped my .COs a couple times, adding an M at the end just out of routine. Type-in traffic is less important for social networking sites and blogs though since many people bookmark or share links via FB/Digg/etc.

 

[Michelle]

ccTLDs are a growing market so I don't feel money is 'wasted' on them, as long as you stick to premium or country-specific keywords. However, anyone that thinks .CO will eventually compete with generic extensions is fooling themselves. Serious businesses will not use .CO as it can easily be mistaken for .COM. I'll admit, I've already mistyped my .COs a couple times, adding an M at the end just out of routine.

I REALLY adore cctld's and have invested in them as I do see a massive future but ..

With this launch do you really think you had a chance of picking up any of the top 5k names?

This is my problem..

Not with cctlds
Not with new ext

 

[DNProperty.com]

Good one..

Never gets boring, every time a new extension comes around, its like the circus is in town

This is all you need to read, to see what will happen.

Domain Name Wire » News » The Lifecyle of a Top Level Domain Fanboy - The Domain Industry's News Source

the best post i have ever read

 

[Animator]

This is all you need to read, to see what will happen.

Domain Name Wire » News » The Lifecyle of a Top Level Domain Fanboy - The Domain Industry's News Source

the best post i have ever read

This article was written by a .COM fanboy.

 

[siga]

I think .co has a chance to be made cctld neutral by google ala .me/.tv there has been some good marketing with the sale of e.co/ no_url_shorteners/ o.co then sites on disrupt.co and challenge.co. This will be positive for the cctld if it does happen/

However have you seen how hard it has been to register any good keywords( not even the top tier.. ) I did a search for niches/ hacks/ and keywords close to some I have picked up in other tlds recently. Or areas I know would sell....
They were all taken prior to general release or cherry picked into the reserved list. I agree completely with mellow mashers statement, to me there is nothing that I would feel is worth the investment left.

For someone who is purchasing domains names for resale or as a speculative investment for the future this cctld would be a poor choice (imho). As there seems to be just the scraps left, the renewals are expensive at present and for just under 3 times the cost better keywords can be caught at drop catchers or as pre releases even for a little more on the aftermarket. And can be kept for the future (and cost less to renew) or most likely flipped or developed just now without a worry of people being unsure what it is.

I have voted I am unsure of whether this cctld will be a success (outside of its own country)and will depend on the future marketing aswell as the actions of the domain holders. To the person who said in 5 years time .co will over take .net and .org please read the other new tld threads that have been. (.tel/.me) I very much doubt it. These claims come over and over again and in the grand scheme of things 5 years is not very long at all. (Disclaimer: I have purchased both .tel and .me but have been under no such illusion)

Good luck with your investments. .co is not for me.

 

[mwzd]

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

:lol: Nice one.

I think there is a limited window of opportunity in .co, as long as you do not indulge in wishful thinking, or buy the hype.

Totally true, but depending on which end of the transaction you are will differentiate winners from losers.

There is NO official position from Google in there.

Nada, zip, niente.

There is a BIG difference.

To make it OFFICIAL we need a Google source, a name... that's why I say this is bull... just to get us buying more domains...

Totally correct, just more hype.

You have to give them this, with each new launch the PR machinery just gets better and better.

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

Even before the 'official' grandfathering period it seems from whois.

I got a few, I'm going to flip them for a profit, if I can. Wouldn't want to be stuck with an unsellable portfolio w/o local development plans, which might necessitate local language sensibilities, of which I have none. Good luck to all the .co 'investors', sure hope you know what you're doing.

 

[wot]

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:

I think that is the answer 100%

 

[fruttolo]

Just look at the whois of google dot co and then you have something official

new ccTLD can't always fail as its been in the last years... some will take their deserved spot, and .co will!

 

[firefly]

lol Snoop. Love the post and the sig cracks me up. Rep added.

ccTLDs on the other hands are limited to 2 letters long and the most successful ones depends on the country population and popularity like

You might want to check your facts. Two of the strongest cctlds that I would spend money on are .co.uk and .com.au; four and five letters long respectively and totally dominant in their respective markets.

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

Obviously not as short as some people's memories of the last 'next big thing'.

ccTLDs are 2 letters long and as you know, shorter is better.
gTLDs are 3 to 6 letters long...

Refer to the first point I made. You obviously haven't done your homework on this and it shows.

.CO is glowing at rocket speed while .COM as been growing slowly by age like a turtle.

I don't know about rocket speed but I think a few people sniffed some rocket fuel before going nuts on this new 'next big thing'. Besides, by your reckoning (turtles) you only have about another 120 years before the new extension takes over...lol.

In 5 years i expect .CO to kill .ORG and .NET or reach the same level as .COM

Ok...so which is it...kill it or be on the same level? You are not even sure about your own hype.

Originally Posted by Animator View Post
gTLDs can create infinite numbers of extensions while ccTLDs are limited to 195 countries and out of those 195 counties only 4 have meaningful extension .CO .TV .ME .US

Shakes head. :music::cy:

^

.comers never evolve.

Funnily enough they survive though, unlike most of the newbies that invest big on every new big thing that comes along.

This article was written by a .COM fanboy.

And you wouldn't be a .co fanboy now, would you...lol. The pot calling the kettle black there.

All that being said...I am interested to see what happens with this extension. I expect it to be a haven for tm squatters and scammers alike and not much else. If people are successful with it I will be happy for them but I won't be holding my breath. JMO

 

[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.

 

[bmugford]

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?

Exactly. You basically have a handful of people and holding companies who own all the top generics without competition and that is a major issue with almost any launch.

It ends up locking up the best terms so they will never get developed.

39,000 domains, including all the top generics, were long gone when the registration started for normal people. The rest of the domains are pretty much the leftovers.

I think a major problem is much of the money in new extensions is new money, and many of the buyers just have no clue about what terms are desirable and what are not.

I have seen countless terms taken in .CO that would barely have value in .COM

The bottom line is if this was .INC no one would care. The "company" aspect is not driving interest, the typo aspect is.

Sure you might get some spillover traffic from popular TM typos, which is a dream for squatters and phishing, but I don't see many major companies developing a site on .CO with the obvious traffic loss to .COM

Looks for lots of pumping in the next few months. You will hear of stories of big sales, and how much traffic the domains are receiving.

I predict about a year from now a lot of these "investors" will have disappeared like with any other TLD launch.

Brad

 

[Sparhawke]

You know what I would like to see Brad?

A tax on these jackals who register domains before they are open to everyone else, at least $10,000 per domain per year that they register before everyone has a chance to should do it. And that is for the entire time the domain is in existence on their books, they cannot just drop it and get it back again to trick the system.

That will guarantee 2 things, that people will think twice before ever grabbing a domain before they go to open sale and that they will be developed.

The problem as I see it is that I could go to a country, speak to a few ministers and line their pockets with bribes so that I can set up an extension for them, assuring that I get everything I want first.

gTLDs can create infinite numbers of extensions while ccTLDs are limited to 195 countries and out of those 195 counties only 4 have meaningful extension .CO .TV .ME .US

Seriously, WTF does .COM means seriously ? What is .COM ? As far as i know, it used to mean "command" in the 80's and in the late 90's they used as the abbreviation of the word "company" wich it isn't and now it is promoted as "commercial"?

".COM" means computer in Japan.

".NET" i mean are you a spider ?

".ORG" does that mean you have a orgy? :D

ccTLDs are 2 letters long and as you know, shorter is better.
gTLDs are 3 to 6 letters long...

By the way, it is obvious this Animator has no idea what he is talking about, everyone here knows that .US is a useless extension that nobody wants for the exact same reason that we are discussing with .CO

That is because the US government in all its tiny wisdom withheld it for no good reason and made it so that the American people had no extension of their own so they were forced to accept .COM by default.

.CO.UK by comparison is known by 90% of the English population, it is one of the strongest domains in the world for that reason even though the double dot is unwieldy and I hate it.

Ask anyone here, ask anyone you want who actually knows what they're talking about about if they could choose between insurance.us and insurance.co.uk and I can guarantee what they will choose. They WILL choose to take the UK version because they know that 70,000,000 all knowing that their country code will bring them to insurance far outweighs the God knows how few that will know not to type in .COM first. (Has anyone actually done any study at all into how many Americans are aware of the .US extension?)

In summation, an extension does not need hype to make it popular, it needs a buying public to adopt it and to hold it close in its formative years, to protect and nurture it, if you hand over everything to a few who have the parental equivalent idea of smothering their baby then you will kill it off for all time.

I hope the ministers who took the bribes will be very happy when there country extension is worthless in say...2 or 3 years?

 

[bmugford]

The problem as I see it is that I could go to a country, speak to a few ministers and line their pockets with bribes so that I can set up an extension for them, assuring that I get everything I want first.

You mean like the deal between Kevin Ham and .CM (Cameroon) to capture wildcard traffic and send it to his server? It is very well documented.

The wildcard allowed not only the ability to capture generic traffic, but also TM typo traffic.

There is a lot of shady stuff going on in the domain business. It is no wonder the industry has such a negative reputation with the general public.

Brad

---------- Post added at 09:16 AM ---------- Previous post was at 09:05 AM ----------

By the way, it is obvious this Animator has no idea what he is talking about, everyone here knows that .US is a useless extension that nobody wants for the exact same reason that we are discussing with .CO

That is because the US government in all its tiny wisdom withheld it for no good reason and made it so that the American people had no extension of their own so they were forced to accept .COM by default.

.CO.UK by comparison is known by 90% of the English population, it is one of the strongest domains in the world for that reason even though the double dot is unwieldy and I hate it.

Ask anyone here, ask anyone you want who actually knows what they're talking about about if they could choose between insurance.us and insurance.co.uk and I can guarantee what they will choose. They WILL choose to take the UK version because they know that 70,000,000 all knowing that their country code will bring them to insurance far outweighs the God knows how few that will know not to type in .COM first. (Has anyone actually done any study at all into how many Americans are aware of the .US extension?)

I am a fan of .US (long term). With that said everything you said is right. When .US became available in 2002 .COM was already well established and while it has gained some traction since then it has been a slow movement.

I would like to have Insurance.co.uk or Insurance.us, but would obviously take .CO.UK if that was the choice. It has far more end user potential as the extension is far more established.

Brad