shayan
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- Impact
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Suppose that this continually increasing number is not indicative to this rise in this number. That is to say, let us assume that as the number of internet users increase, there will be a divergence, or, a weak correlation, between the number of internet users and the number of websites online. If this possibility does turn out to be true, then arguments such as “nGTLDs, and domain investing are completely useless; the number of supply in domain names is exponentially far greater than the demand, no matter which way you look at it…..etc” then, can become valid points.
However, here is where it gets interesting, and the motivation of creating this thread: Now, imagine, at some point, registries, such as GoDaddy, decide to discontinue domain extensions: “Dear users, due to ____ and ___, the domain extension ‘.media’ will no longer be a product sold by us, as the registry has decided to discontinue all available registrations associated with the '.media' domain extension. However, customers who currently own the ‘.media’ domain extension, will be able to continue to hold their registration, until they choose to drop their domain renewal.” -GoDaddy
With such a transition, the environment of domains changes, effective immediately. There is no reason for me to write an in-depth analysis of the economic and social implications of how such a policy would change things, but the change within the social system among Internet users would be huge. This would create immediate scarcity, which effectively causes a limitation to the total number of websites possible on the internet. Now, not only is the social system competing for their own social space, but, there are real net changes within the participation environment, where, to participate as an operator on the internet (whether you’re running your own store, blog, hosting, etc…), it will require you to obtain a piece of space (domain), of which that is now in scarce quantity. Now, let’s say such new policies (discontinuations) introduced are made in increments, that is, the registries implement one domain discontinuation every 30 days (or, if that's too extreme, just think one-two discontinuations per year, or, two years). Is this nothing to be concerned about? Well, when such a pattern is introduced, you better be prepared to witness investors such as Alibaba Cloud Computing Ltd. to increase their current market share of gTLDs from their current 17.84% to 30-40%, or whatever they are able to purchase. Now, multiply this possibility, where, other big name corporations and investors increasing their purchases in domains, because they are witnessing domains being discontinued. Now are you scared? If you thought 200k domain registrations in one day was a lot, now consider 4 million a day, as people rush to register before they are discontinued, or registered by someone else. This is certainly a possible scenario when faced with the environment where domain extensions are being discontinued and reduced in quantity.
What is the real percentage possibility of this actually occurring? Could this happen tomorrow? We already are reading about CEOs, like Uniregistry’s Frank Schilling, reporting an increase of 3000% on a select few domains. Well, this is where it starts. First they increase registration costs, this creates (1) financial scarcity: It’s even more expensive now to purchase domains, relative to what the prices were yesterday. Next, for companies like Uniregistry, they’re going to want their other business segments, such as their buying/selling of existing domains, to earn more profits. They already have thousands of hungry brokers, right? So, as a result, they’ll likely start increasing the scarcity of the domains through, (2) physical scarcity: by way of closing up the total amount of possible registrations possible. Although I and you cannot forecast when these changes will happen, we all know that the first implementation of this possibility is already in effect: starting in September 2017, some domain extensions will be financially more expensive to own. This is the start. Now please, don’t bash and say “oh, that’s only on ‘x’ and ‘y’ extensions”. Rather, understand what they are currently doing, and adapt that analysis to a more intermediate timeframe. Also, that is only referencing one company, you can analyze this by using a multiplier, where, effectively other companies similar to Uniregistry follow the pattern.
No one has ever appreciated something until it became scarce:
We’ve had the freedom of registering any kind of domain name, on any kind of extension you could imagine. But, this might not last forever. You won’t understand or appreciate this current environment that we have with respect to domain registrations - at the quantity currently availability and the current costs of registrations - until they increase; for example, the day your renewal price is $500 or, to realize that buying another domain for your next company may cost you $5000-$10000 at least. These are very possible outcomes that can occur. I would not be surprised to see if this is the future environment.
On a final note, something more fun, but real, and related to what is being discussed here, I wanted to discuss the Party Hat mania in RuneScape. So unless you played that game, or know what the Party Hats are, you might not fully understand, but it is still worth reading the following: In RuneScape (a MMORPG), during the year 2001 Christmas event, "Party Hats" (literally just a normal hat you could equip on your character to wear in the game) were showered during the Christmas event. There were thousands, if not, millions of these hats. Anyone who was online playing the game at the time of the event, didn’t get one or two Party Hats, but instead, got at least four-five Party Hats. The value at that time for these Party Hats were 1 coin. Literally, a penny’s worth in that game (everyone had one!). Many people, after the event, sold it to the NPC (non-player character) or simply deleted them. However, these Party Hats became discontinued. Since 2001, they have become to be known as the most valuable item in the game, where today, one Party Hat costs over 2 billion gold (maximum amount of gold you can possibly own in the game). That’s all I wanted to share regarding RuneScape. One item that was so freely available during one period, became discontinued, that since its discontinuation, has, for every day, caused its value to increase. The RuneScape case-study was not meant to be a direct possible comparison, but it was only to show the real social and economic implications of changing something freely available to becoming discontinued/limited/scarce; effectively, what this thread is focused on: The Discontinuation Theory.
No one has ever fully appreciated something until it became scarce.
However, here is where it gets interesting, and the motivation of creating this thread: Now, imagine, at some point, registries, such as GoDaddy, decide to discontinue domain extensions: “Dear users, due to ____ and ___, the domain extension ‘.media’ will no longer be a product sold by us, as the registry has decided to discontinue all available registrations associated with the '.media' domain extension. However, customers who currently own the ‘.media’ domain extension, will be able to continue to hold their registration, until they choose to drop their domain renewal.” -GoDaddy
With such a transition, the environment of domains changes, effective immediately. There is no reason for me to write an in-depth analysis of the economic and social implications of how such a policy would change things, but the change within the social system among Internet users would be huge. This would create immediate scarcity, which effectively causes a limitation to the total number of websites possible on the internet. Now, not only is the social system competing for their own social space, but, there are real net changes within the participation environment, where, to participate as an operator on the internet (whether you’re running your own store, blog, hosting, etc…), it will require you to obtain a piece of space (domain), of which that is now in scarce quantity. Now, let’s say such new policies (discontinuations) introduced are made in increments, that is, the registries implement one domain discontinuation every 30 days (or, if that's too extreme, just think one-two discontinuations per year, or, two years). Is this nothing to be concerned about? Well, when such a pattern is introduced, you better be prepared to witness investors such as Alibaba Cloud Computing Ltd. to increase their current market share of gTLDs from their current 17.84% to 30-40%, or whatever they are able to purchase. Now, multiply this possibility, where, other big name corporations and investors increasing their purchases in domains, because they are witnessing domains being discontinued. Now are you scared? If you thought 200k domain registrations in one day was a lot, now consider 4 million a day, as people rush to register before they are discontinued, or registered by someone else. This is certainly a possible scenario when faced with the environment where domain extensions are being discontinued and reduced in quantity.
What is the real percentage possibility of this actually occurring? Could this happen tomorrow? We already are reading about CEOs, like Uniregistry’s Frank Schilling, reporting an increase of 3000% on a select few domains. Well, this is where it starts. First they increase registration costs, this creates (1) financial scarcity: It’s even more expensive now to purchase domains, relative to what the prices were yesterday. Next, for companies like Uniregistry, they’re going to want their other business segments, such as their buying/selling of existing domains, to earn more profits. They already have thousands of hungry brokers, right? So, as a result, they’ll likely start increasing the scarcity of the domains through, (2) physical scarcity: by way of closing up the total amount of possible registrations possible. Although I and you cannot forecast when these changes will happen, we all know that the first implementation of this possibility is already in effect: starting in September 2017, some domain extensions will be financially more expensive to own. This is the start. Now please, don’t bash and say “oh, that’s only on ‘x’ and ‘y’ extensions”. Rather, understand what they are currently doing, and adapt that analysis to a more intermediate timeframe. Also, that is only referencing one company, you can analyze this by using a multiplier, where, effectively other companies similar to Uniregistry follow the pattern.
No one has ever appreciated something until it became scarce:
- Maybe you never appreciated public transportation until that one month your public transportation stopped operating and you had to walk for two hours to get to your destination;
- Maybe you never appreciated someone, until that someone had xx days remaining to live;
- Maybe you never fully appreciated your living conditions, until you went to a city/country where their living conditions were disproportionately much worse than yours;
We’ve had the freedom of registering any kind of domain name, on any kind of extension you could imagine. But, this might not last forever. You won’t understand or appreciate this current environment that we have with respect to domain registrations - at the quantity currently availability and the current costs of registrations - until they increase; for example, the day your renewal price is $500 or, to realize that buying another domain for your next company may cost you $5000-$10000 at least. These are very possible outcomes that can occur. I would not be surprised to see if this is the future environment.
On a final note, something more fun, but real, and related to what is being discussed here, I wanted to discuss the Party Hat mania in RuneScape. So unless you played that game, or know what the Party Hats are, you might not fully understand, but it is still worth reading the following: In RuneScape (a MMORPG), during the year 2001 Christmas event, "Party Hats" (literally just a normal hat you could equip on your character to wear in the game) were showered during the Christmas event. There were thousands, if not, millions of these hats. Anyone who was online playing the game at the time of the event, didn’t get one or two Party Hats, but instead, got at least four-five Party Hats. The value at that time for these Party Hats were 1 coin. Literally, a penny’s worth in that game (everyone had one!). Many people, after the event, sold it to the NPC (non-player character) or simply deleted them. However, these Party Hats became discontinued. Since 2001, they have become to be known as the most valuable item in the game, where today, one Party Hat costs over 2 billion gold (maximum amount of gold you can possibly own in the game). That’s all I wanted to share regarding RuneScape. One item that was so freely available during one period, became discontinued, that since its discontinuation, has, for every day, caused its value to increase. The RuneScape case-study was not meant to be a direct possible comparison, but it was only to show the real social and economic implications of changing something freely available to becoming discontinued/limited/scarce; effectively, what this thread is focused on: The Discontinuation Theory.
No one has ever fully appreciated something until it became scarce.
