Boycott Icann's New Domain Name Extension Release, Thread

[unholygod]

The end of domaining ?

Biggest Expansion to Internet in Forty Years Approved for Implementation

26 June 2008

Paris, France: The Board of ICANN today approved a recommendation that could see a whole range of new names introduced to the Internet's addressing system.

"The Board today accepted a recommendation from its global stakeholders that it is possible to implement many new names to the Internet, paving the way for an expansion of domain name choice and opportunity" said Dr Paul Twomey, President and CEO of ICANN.

A final version of the implementation plan must be approved by the ICANN Board before the new process is launched. It is intended that the final version will be published in early 2009.

"The potential here is huge. It represents a whole new way for people to express themselves on the Net," said Dr Twomey. "It's a massive increase in the 'real estate' of the Internet."

Presently, users have a limited range of 21 top level domains to choose from — names that we are all familiar with like .com, .org, .info.

This proposal allows applicants for new names to self-select their domain name so that choices are most appropriate for their customers or potentially the most marketable. It is expected that applicants will apply for targeted community strings such as (the existing) .travel for the travel industry and .cat for the Catalan community (as well as generic strings like .brandname or .yournamehere). There are already interested consortiums wanting to establish city-based top level domain, like .nyc (for New York City), .berlin and .paris.

"One of the most exciting prospect before us is that the expanding system is also being planned to support extensions in the languages of the world," said Peter Dengate Thrush, ICANN's Chairman. "This is going to be very important for the future of the Internet in Asia, the Middle East, Eastern Europe and Russia." The present system only supports 37 Roman characters.

Upon approval of the implementation plan, it is planned that applications for new names will be available in the second quarter of 2009.

SOURCE

 

[weblord]

this can be false prophecy for all you know it.

 

[Web Master]

The post was deleted by the poster.

The post was deleted by the poster.

 

[Easydoms]

Someone I know at work asked me about icann and who they were after reading an article on the net, he was saying how cool it would be if he could reg his ext if the plans went ahead, which leads to the following!!!

If joe blogs for example wanted create his own ext purely because he wants to set a website up for his own personal use, then mr big fish come along and says to icann, hang on but we want that, who wins?

Joe blogs the innocent party who saw a chance to get something unusual and different or the million pound company who have the best lawyers in the country!!

I do think it will open a can of worms and cause a lot issues for all`concerned.

 

[GoPC]

I think they will simply refer to their current rules regarding the issues. You're right though...it will be interesting to see what trouble some guys with unlimited funds might cause. LOL

TMs are still TMs though and those vested in them have far more to fight for (or loose) than a simple single domain. I think you will see ICANN be more active in policing these and I think you will find more Companies more aggressive in protecting them.

The one thing that surprises me is the policy of "bidding" on the extensions. I suppose, if NBC were outbid for the domain by some other party interested in the ext, at some point it might be reduced to nothing more than a lawsuit over the proper ownership of the mark.

Maybe this WILL get exciting. LOL!

GoPC

 

[Ronald Regging]

The one thing that surprises me is the policy of "bidding" on the extensions. I suppose, if NBC were outbid for the domain by some other party interested in the ext, at some point it might be reduced to nothing more than a lawsuit over the proper ownership of the mark.

Maybe this WILL get exciting. LOL!

GoPC

More than likely the bidding wars will be for premium generic keywords like .realestate or .auto. I can see the possibility of more than one company wanting to maintain those types of extensions and when that occurs, ICANN wants to get paid. Someone made an interesting point though... ICANN may require that for a company to run an extension, the extension must be open to the public to register. The whole reason they are doing this is to open up the name spaces for more Internet users and to probably make even more money from registration fees. While offering closed extensions to companies who want to brand under a specific TM might seem like a neat idea, it offers absolutely nothing to the Internet as a whole if people can't register domains under the extension.

I don't really know what they are planning exactly, but then again, if I know ICANN, I doubt they even know exactly what they're doing yet either.

 

[Sir Regalot]

Is creating new type of domain names worth the effort?

Finken says these new domains may work for well established companies, but for a new company trying to get off the ground, ".com" is the way to go. Other top level domains don't attract a lot of people.

http://www.ksl.com/?nid=148&sid=3727865

 

[GoPC]

I don't really know what they are planning exactly, but then again, if I know ICANN, I doubt they even know exactly what they're doing yet either.

Well said! ROTFLMAO!!!

GoPC

 

[JamesDavid]

How soon till we see an .xxx?

 

[labrocca]

While offering closed extensions to companies who want to brand under a specific TM might seem like a neat idea, it offers absolutely nothing to the Internet as a whole if people can't register domains under the extension.

I agree. I can't see why ICANN would allow walled gardens for extensions. The idea of NBC having their own extension is a novelty idea but doesn't really push ICANN's agenda of opening up new extension USE for the public.

And Joe Blog would have an incredibly hard time running an extension. It's not a small venture. It will cost yearly $xx,xxx MINUMUM in software and hardware costs.

 

[nrmillions]

I agree. I can't see why ICANN would allow walled gardens for extensions.

what about other walled garden extensions such as .edu and .gov and .mil?

 

[labrocca]

what about other walled garden extensions such as .edu and .gov and .mil?

Those were created for Goverment purposes. That's vastly different than commercial usage.

 

[ecigs.net]

I don't think it will affect good+ premium names much, but it will weaken really poor names.

I agree totally.

 

[akcampbell]

I would compare .com to gold and any new extensions ICANN issues to costume jewellery. The fact you can replicate a $1m piece of jewellery for $20 doesn't mean the $1m original loses it's value. The markets for the original and replica are separate and become more separate as the supply of replicas increase and their selling price falls.

People who buy fake Rolexes aren't the same people who buy real ones and so Rolex can still charge $20,000 for something almost indistinguishable from what you can buy for $5 at the Silk Market in Beijing.

This year I bought Savings.info for $4,000 and Coupons.info for $7,000. The .coms sold for $1.9m and $2.2m respectively. I don't have the spending power to buy the .coms so me buying the .info hasn't impacted on the demand or supply for top single word generic .coms. However, if I didn't have the option of a single word .info I might have bought a 2 word Savings or Coupons .com so looked at that way .com is worse off for .info existing.

I think it will be the same with new extensions. It won't affect top single word generic.coms, good mid-range 2 word .coms, or some top single word alternative extension domains because of market separation but whatever is just above the new extensions in terms of punching power is vulnerable.

 

[ecigs.net]

$11,000?

I would compare .com to gold and any new extensions ICANN issues to costume jewellery. The fact you can replicate a $1m piece of jewellery for $20 doesn't mean the $1m original loses it's value. The markets for the original and replica are separate and become more separate as the supply of replicas increase and their selling price falls.

People who buy fake Rolexes aren't the same people who buy real ones and so Rolex can still charge $20,000 for something almost indistinguishable from what you can buy for $5 at the Silk Market in Beijing.

You seriously think that new TLDs are costume jewellery, i.e. fake jewellery, i.e. have absolutely no value or no future value? COM is gold and everything else is worthless. If that's true, why did you spend $11,000 on 2 INFOs that you can reg new for 2 bucks?

 

[akcampbell]

Single word generic .coms are the sun and as you get further from the sun it gets disproportionately colder.

Consider .pro, it works with a broad range of keywords, sounds good, trademark registries are littered with pro brands, we are writing this one a domainer site with pro in the name, but there are only 6,500 registered.

It's partly due to mispricing, very bad marketing, and restrictions but it gives you a fast forward of where alot of these new extensions could end up. RegistryPro makes about $325,000 in reg fees per annum, it has 15 staff so it's reg fees hardly cover the salary cost of the highest paid 2 or 3 people.

Going back to your question about why spend $11,000 on 2 .infos when I could reg new for $2. I could reg something like 1ak.info or 3x9.info for $2 and brand them as money saving sites but I don't think it would work as well as Coupons.info or Savings.info. With the same database, coding, design and SEO, I think I'd get further with my .infos than I would with 1ak.info and 3x9.info and a marketing budget of $11,000.

You could say why spend $4.1m on Savings.com and Coupons.com when you can reg for $20. Facebook and YouTube didn't need to spend millions of domains but it worked for Savings.com, Coupons.com, CreditCards.com and Business.com. There are different ways of getting where you want to get.

 

[ecigs.net]

coupons.info -vs- 3x7.info

Single word generic .coms are the sun and as you get further from the sun it gets disproportionately colder.

Consider .pro, it works with a broad range of keywords, sounds good, trademark registries are littered with pro brands, we are writing this one a domainer site with pro in the name, but there are only 6,500 registered.

It's partly due to mispricing, very bad marketing, and restrictions but it gives you a fast forward of where alot of these new extensions could end up. RegistryPro makes about $325,000 in reg fees per annum, it has 15 staff so it's reg fees hardly cover the salary cost of the highest paid 2 or 3 people.

Going back to your question about why spend $11,000 on 2 .infos when I could reg new for $2. I could reg something like 1ak.info or 3x9.info for $2 and brand them as money saving sites but I don't think it would work as well as Coupons.info or Savings.info. With the same database, coding, design and SEO, I think I'd get further with my .infos than I would with 1ak.info and 3x9.info and a marketing budget of $11,000.

You could say why spend $4.1m on Savings.com and Coupons.com when you can reg for $20. Facebook and YouTube didn't need to spend millions of domains but it worked for Savings.com, Coupons.com, CreditCards.com and Business.com. There are different ways of getting where you want to get.

You are right about coupons.info/savings.info being higher quality domains than 3x7.info. There's no doubt there. One point for you.

However, I was questioning your 11k investment in INFO, not COM prices for the same keywords. Quoting COM prices is totally beside the point. I think that you will never reach COM prices with INFO unless public awareness vastly improves. As it is right now, today, the Internet is COM. When people think coupons, they think at least coupons.com 99% of the time (if not 100%). In order for you to make the million plus prices, the public must think coupons.info when they hear coupons. People do not think of INFO and are not likely to do so in the near future.

Therefore, in my opinion, your $11,000 for 2 INFOs is a MASSIVE risk. It is speculation on a grand scale. You say non-COMs are costume jewelery, so we both agree that anything other than COM is a risk. Yet, you paid $11,000 for two INFOs. That doesn't make any sense to me. It is contradictory. That's really what my comment was about. If you think that non-COMs are costume jewelery, why take such a risk?

I rarely buy high value domains unless they provide three items. 1) the domain has a high volume of traffic already established 2) the domain has a high volume of automatic type in traffic 3) the domain is similar to one of my projects and improves the project greatly.

After looking at coupons.info & savings.info in Google/Yahoo/Ask/LIVE and with Alexa, Netcraft, Compete, URLtrends, and Archive.org, neither of your two domains fulfills my criteria. Therefore, I would never purchase either coupons.info & savings.info for $11,000. The risk is far greater than I am willing to take. Would I pay $11,000 for savings.com and coupons.com, hell yes. That's easy money.

Since you mentioned the domains in my signature, we can discuss CCC.infos and why the CCC.infos I own are extremely valuable to me.

I have many such CCC.info domains. Most of these provide approximately 50 visitors per month to one of our product websites. Since I generally pay $.25 to $.32 per click for a visitor (regardless of whether it is click fraud or not), an average CCC.info sends us between $150 and $192 worth of traffic that I would normally have to pay to get. Since reg fees are only $7.05, I am paying less than $0.01 per click. Instead of AdWords getting that money, it is invested in a domain name that might (in 10 years) be valuable. It makes economic sense to attract visitors in this manner. I no longer have to do as much outside advertising. I invest company funds instead of wantonly spending them and I'm having fun too.

So that's my reasoning. I make money buying ccc.INFO. 3x7.info provides me with free advertising. It provides me with back links. It is an ultra low cost, no risk domain. My investment pays for itself in terms of traffic and product sales. That's Plus, Plus, Plus with no negatives that I can see.

(By the way, I sold 7x4.info for $299. I don't make as much as you, but my life is stress free.)

This is dragging on but you raised a lot of points: Your .PRO example.

Pro costs $99 a year. Regular people are not going to pay $99 a year. The PRO extension is a hassle. PRO is expensive. PRO is run by people that don't understand why everyone on earth has either a Google or Yahoo email account and why everyone has a myspace page. PEOPLE EXPECT FREE!!! PEOPLE WANT FREE!!!

Take ME for example. I am betting thumbs down. Regular people won't pay $40 for it (@ $20 a year). That means only domainers will buy it and it will not come even slightly close to what COM is. Never! If any new extension is to do well, they have to be FREE, FREE, FREE.

Who can give you free? Imagine a company like MySpace giving away free domains with every MySpace account. Instead of typing myspace.com/login, you type your login.myspace. People will adapt instantly. In one month, millions of people will get it, understand it, use it and LOVE it.

Don't even bother talking about over-priced non-products like .PRO. PRO was doomed from day one. People want free and the company that gives people a free TLD is going to be a player and everyone else is not.

 

[akcampbell]

I guess people have different perceptions of risk. I don't regard paying $11,000 for Savings.info and Coupons.info as particularly risky. Another guy on DNF offered $5,000 for Coupons.info so I could sell it tomorrow with no marketing and lose $2,000. When Rick Schwartz bought Flowers.mobi for $200,000, I thought that was risky, but I doubt it kept him awake at night.

I didn't say all non-Coms were worthless. I said that as you get further from .com down the extension hierarchy value falls off a cliff. A .net is worth perhaps 1/50 of a .com, a .info in this case 1/400, a .web or something coming next year maybe 1/3000. That for me isn't worth speculating on or developing, alot of .com domainers would have applied the same logic when .info came along which is why you get such a sharp fall off in value.

You say in order for me to make my "million plus prices", that would be great but it's not something I'm counting on. If a .info went from 1/400 of a .com price to 1/200 in the case of Savings.info and Coupons.info and .com went up in value, that would a great return over 5 years. However, that's not my intention, I bought these domains to develop.

Only 1/6 of internet traffic is direct navigation. .com will always have that slice of traffic sown up because it's what people think of first and type in. The other 5/6 is competed for through ads, links and SEO. If I'm joining a site and I have to give personal details, maybe credit card details, I start to feel uncomfortable about non .com sites. But if I'm getting information with no sign up, I'm less concerned about what extension I'm on. .info can do what it says on the tin on a more level playing field with .com than alot of other extensions. It's obviously still very uneven but it's less uneven than the massive price difference with .com suggests.

I partly agree with you about free extensions, you can't beat free. I personally wouldn't develop a free domain because if I haven't paid for it, I would question whether the registrar and registry have any contractual obligations to carry on providing that service which isn't a strong foundation to build an online business on.

Also, it could only be free if it was supported by advertising like Godaddy's free hosting, maybe with revenue share thrown in, but I wouldn't want to develop sites with those constraints for the sake of saving a $10 a year. People have always complained about .info being spammy because of the very low reg fees but any free extension would take that to the next level.

 

[oldtimer]

Most domainers probably are not going to be very happy with all the new competition that this might create since any market share that the new TLDs are going to get will most likely be at the expense of the older extensions such as .com and .net (maybe .org to a lesser extent), although some ccTLDs such as .US might actually be less affected in the long run because of their inherent patriotic and geo specific nature, which some people might find useful for their business once they become more aware of these choices, but overall all the older extensions are going to be affected as the whole landscape of the Internet is going to change by the introduction of the new TLDs. The only extensions that might benefit from this might be the ones like “.Travel “ , “.Jobs “ , or “.Pro “ which might be able to reintroduce themselves as new TLDs since not too many people know about them yet.

Most domainers see this situation only from their own perspective, but they have to realize that the creation of new TLDs has been lobbied for by the community and businesses for the past few years probably because they got tired of being held at ransom for their favorite domains and the fact that they were forced to register their brands in so many different extensions in order to protect themselves from typo and TM infringements.

In my opinion it is inevitable that some new TLDS in the format such as “ .CompanyBrand “ , “ .FamousName “ , “.CityName “ , or “.TopGenericKeyword “ will be approved and implemented in the near future. Supposedly there might be up to 100 new TLDs approved in each initial round, but the final numbers could reach in the thousands within a few years. It is very important for New TLDs in the categories of “.CityNames “ , or “.TopGenericKeywords “ to be handled properly since these are public assets that can be of benefit to everyone for decades (or even centuries !) into the future.

At this point what is more important is to make sure that these new TLDs are going to be awarded and used in a way that benefits the public as a whole and not just to maximize the monetary returns for a few since giving away some of the generic keywords such as “ .RealEstate “ or city TLDs such as “.NYC “ or “.Chicago “ would be the same as selling the Mississippi River or Grand Canyon for a 100k to an individual or a company. We have to learn from some of those sweetheart deals that have been made in the past and how some of the members seemed to prefer to look the other way while certain companies and individuals took advantage of the public with their predatory tactics and so we have to make sure that those things are not repeated when it comes to something that has the potential to change the whole landscape of the Internet. IMO

Even though it seems like there is going to be a lot more competition in the future, but there are still going to be some new opportunities for domainers both in the way of obtaining popular second level domains in some of those new TLDs (or even getting their own TLD if they are lucky enough and can afford it) and in the way of developing some of their existing domains. In 5 years if there are going to be a lot of new TLDs that are going to compete for traffic with the old extensions then we probably can assume that the domains that are out of the range of that competition won’t be affected as much and will have a better chance to succeed as a developed site, even those that have to compete directly with the new TLDs might still have a chance if their target audience is limited to a small group or a specific geographical area since it is easier to advertise to a limited number of people and to provide them with a unique service, product, or information that the bigger TLDs might be lacking in. IMO



PS: For those who are interested there is still couple of days left to email your comments to ICANN / GNSO on this subject:

GNSO Council Opens Public Comment Forum for Top Level GNSO Improvements Implementation Plan (deadline to submit comments is July 17, 2008)

http://www.icann.org/en/announcements/announcement-25jun08-en.htm



_____________________

 

[raredn.com]

Most domainers probably are not going to be very happy with all the new competition that this might create since any market share that the new TLDs are going to get will most likely be at the expense of the older extensions such as .com and .net (maybe .org to a lesser extent), although some ccTLDs such as .US might actually be less affected in the long run because of their inherent patriotic and geo specific nature, which some people might find useful for their business once they become more aware of these choices

.com, you have to be kidding right? History tells us new extensions just make .com stronger

 

[oldtimer]

History tells us new extensions just make .com stronger

Lets hope that you are right, but then why is this thread about boycotting the new TLDs. I agree that .com is an established brand that has a huge mind share, and perhaps a few unknown TLDs that nobody wanted to use might have helped make .com stronger in the past, but the past is no guarantee for how things might turn out in the future since there might be hundreds of established brands and premium keywords that might be made into new TLDs which could produce serious competition for .com in a very short time. Having to compete with hundreds of equally powerful and well known brand and premium TLDs might be a different story than what we have seen up to now. IMO

 

[raredn.com]

Lets hope that you are right, but then why is this thread about boycotting the new TLDs. I agree that .com is an established brand that has a huge mind share, and perhaps a few unknown TLDs that nobody wanted to use might have helped make .com stronger in the past, but the past is no guarantee for how things might turn out in the future since there might be hundreds of established brands and premium keywords that might be made into new TLDs which could produce serious competition for .com in a very short time. Having to compete with hundreds of equally powerful and well known brand and premium TLDs might be a different story than what we have seen up to now. IMO

Thanks for the reply, the boycott is a say it out loud measure to maybe prevent newbie domainers being taken for a ride and given the raw prawn by well monied corporations hoping to make a quick buck out of them

 

[domainer50]

I just pledged my support with a sticky :tu:

Wow Reece, how many of those ribbon things did you buy?

 

[cache]

I like this .myspace example. Or maybe google will offer .google for free

...
Who can give you free? Imagine a company like MySpace giving away free domains with every MySpace account. Instead of typing myspace.com/login, you type your login.myspace. People will adapt instantly. In one month, millions of people will get it, understand it, use it and LOVE it.

Don't even bother talking about over-priced non-products like .PRO. PRO was doomed from day one. People want free and the company that gives people a free TLD is going to be a player and everyone else is not.

 

[westlife1127]

I am from China

yes,unite to boycott !!!
what ICANN thinks itself ? the earth governer ? inernet govener ?
every time when i hear that "ICANN is a non-profit company ", i feel most of us ----domainers , are cheated .
internet belongs to us ----every internet users ! and the gourmand ICANN wants to be the King , governing www , charging of users . that is extremly wrong , naive and gourmand !!!

ok , leave it dreaming .

We , domainers and internet users will be surely the final winner !!!

 

[terror1]

ya thats correct