discuss Do registrars have a role to play in extension's popularity?

[abstractdomainer]

When you search for the .COM version of a domain name and well, it is taken, you get shown a number of other options as well!
Does this influence the popularity of an extension in some way?

Do you think, given the power that GoDaddy and some of the major registrars have, can they influence, by repeatedly suggesting, say .XYZ to different potential buyers, thereby taking an extension to its popularity?
I feel they do play a big part. End users may grab onto .XYZ shown as suggestion, one after another and that leads to more sales in the extension. More sales may lead to more demand and the cycle continues!

What do you think?

 

[jhm]

Respected entities have influence over the popularity of extensions. The company "Block" gave "XYZ" a nice push. I wouldn't suggest that registrars don't have influence, of course they do...the way they do their marketing, promotional deals etc

Fantasy example: If Oprah on her talk show said "ONE" is the "ONE" for business, and if she used it...a good chunk of her followers / fans engaged in online business would take that on-board , a "ONE" to them would be pretty trendy / cool. The influence that certain things can have (unexpected things), shouldn't be underestimated. IMO

 

[DomainConcepts]

I checked this out. I went over to godaddy.com and I entered a domain name:

shay2aeCoo7Phia6caeDah2n.xyz

(I couldn't think of a better one, so I let my password generator choose it.)

GoDaddy then showed me the availability of this domain. And also of the same name in .com, i.e. shay2aeCoo7Phia6caeDah2n.com, even though I didn't ask about that.

Wow, both are still available! (I said that, not GoDaddy. GoDaddy said: "This could be the beginning of something great!", in German, nearly causing me to splurt my coffee.)

Now it gets interesting. Whilst telling me that both these domains were available, GoDaddy also pointed out (in German) the benefit of the .xyz variant: Shay is a high-value keyword which achieves an average sales price of €3,338.00. And the benefit of the .com variant, which is that it uses the .com ending, and that the .com ending is loved around the world.

So is GoDaddy somehow exploiting its influence to increase the popularity of .xyz? I only asked about the .xyz, and I got told this good stuff about .com, being loved around the world for example. So you could also say that GoDaddy is having an influence, by repeatedly suggesting .com to different buyers, thereby taking an extension to its popularity. End users may grab onto the .com extension suggested, leading to more sales of .com, etc. etc. I mean, I only asked about the .xyz, and I would have been happy with the €3,338.00. But being loved around the world, that's tempting too. There's some clever marketing going on here.

GoDaddy also showed me another 38 domains with various extensions. Might have been a couple more or less, as I my mouse kept hovering over the shopping cart and I was concentrating on not inadvertently clicking on shaylee.com for example, for which GoDaddy would have charged me €10,399. (Before you ask, that's $US11,868.06.)

But on the other hand, it is interesting that GoDaddy only highlighted the .xyz and the .com. variants.

 

[Mifuru]

OMG, no.