The ccTLDs belong to the countries in a way that .com and the gTLDs do not. People identify with their country. They see their local ccTLD being used on television and media advertising. After a while they assume that all domains and websites selling to their markets use their ccTLD and that .com etc are for selling to the rest of the world.
Somewhat. People identify with their ccTLD because this is how they were used. There was not an innate association at birth which your argument implies. After a while they assume (because enough use it this way) that .co.uk is for the uk. I for instance, actually use amazon.co.uk AND amazon.com depending on what I'm buying and for who. The companies are using the extension that way.
But the other point is that the association is created through use more than anything else. That use established meaning. If before co.uk came around everyone decided to .england or .com.uk or .gbr or .51stState then that would have been fine.
No one question back in 1992 why we had ac.uk for our university e-mail. We just used ac.uk. No one asked why and no one cared. No one asked why it was Mosaic.com (remember that?) and then mono.co.uk. I guess we knew it was in the US vs UK but it wasn't an issue. People say that the young grow up with new TLDs so are comfortable - so are those of us older folk who grew up with it
The problem for .co is that it is trying to have global reach which won't happen because most of the users are going to be SMB who often demand LOCAL reach.
I think that the extension would have been great for ONLINE ventures... just not as a catch all. It's kind of meaningless. It's just another extension. This could change if there is a correlated use for .co. .me is trying to find its meaning and .TV is trying to find its meaning. They are more obvious to me but each person is different and travels in different circles. It's unclear to me what .co is to become. Everything I read is about .CO as purely an investment .. or typo of .com.
.mobi is interesting because I think .mobi still has a lot of promise but it is relying on first adopters (even now, 4 years later!)
There's also an interesting aspect to the way people remember websites. It used to be (before the rise of the ccTLDs) that people would assume that any website address ended in .com. But the saturation of the ccTLD markets changed that. The ccTLDs also have another interesting angle in that people don't really have to remember the extension because they are in the country. It makes ccTLD websites and domains more memorable.
I agree with the first half in non-USA. In the US.. you say X.TV or Y.ME they still think XTV.com or YME.com. It's a real problem to startups that don't budget marketing properly or assumet that name = brand without effort.
The main issue is that companies don't know how to effectively market and brand. The DOT is the most misused punctuation in branding. .TV is a prime example. Many companies brand as XXX.TV but DON'T own the .TV. Many companies own the .TV and market as BRAND TV.
Too many dumb people in marketing.
It is a strange thing. But some German words are combinations of smaller words.
German creates words from other words. This is true. Doesn't explain the hyphen though!
It will take time for a ccTLD such as .CO to become established and it will be measured in years.
i don't know that it will. Not sure what its meaning is. But I will NOT be the one deciding. Developers harp on about development development development.. and this is true ... but it's not about development it's about real usage. Domainer curated garbage means Sweet FA!
Actually .MOBI has been increasing in registrations. However it is an application specific TLD (mobile devices) and many domainers still treat it as a .com equivalent. Indeed much of the early investment/domaining in .mobi was driven purely by the value of the equivalent domain in .COM TLD.
I'm looking into this. I think there is promise. The question is not whether the platform and the solution need .MOBI.. it's whether .MOBI make the solution easier. I'm an advocate of separation of mobile/main site.
The most reliable segment of renewals will come from brand protection registrations. Some domainers will hold on to their domains for at least one renewal cycle. A lot of the junk will drop in the first Landrush anniversary but the effect of the second anniversary may be more important.
A lot of non-junk will too. I will predict that a number of people will pick up .co for regfee/dropcatch fee that they sell for $!K+
Agreed to some extent. There's still some
opportunity left in .co but many of the high-value single keyword domains are long gone.
My point was not that there isn't opportunity in .CO - there is. My point was that for a non-reseller that there is great opportunity in .com. Not every great domain is $1 M.
I love reading your posts. They're not like most. They're Unbiased, Reasoned, Supported, and matter of fact. I try to be that but opinion sneaks in and people focus on that and and misunderstand that I'm trying to be rational.
Rep your way if allowed.
---------- Post added at 04:09 PM ---------- Previous post was at 03:57 PM ----------
"Even the Overstock.com moniker is temporary because the company is in the process of rebranding itself as O.com."
A company that has its focus on branding itself as O.com ? Drop your holdings.
O.COM means NOTHING. What is O.COM? NOTHING.
The problem overstock.com has is that overstock.com makes it sound like it carries all the crap no one else wanted.
If Overstock.com wants to rebrand itself it needs to define what it IS first and foremost.
O.com is the NAME and not a BRAND. What they sell, provide and to whom is their BRAND. The Name gets associated to that brand first and foremost. It does not work the other way around unless the new name is extremely well thought out and planned. O.anything is not that.
But that's not .co and off topic to the strict moderators of this thread
