Do you like IDNs or ccTLDs better?

[Hurley4540]

I myself prefer ccTLDs way better....probably because English is my first language and I see no point or worth in IDNs...although there has been some really nice IDN sales I just dont get the point of these domains.....

Thoughts?

 

[Fka200]

I don't see IDNs as something that should necessarily be compared to ASCII... Over the last couple weeks I've had some get togethers with some people to discuss domains and IDNs came up and it was always clear that IDNs are available to target a certain audience that cannot be captured with the use of ASCII domains. If you have a domain like: abc123koreanautogroup.com compared to a shorter IDN (wish I could give a decent explain).com... the one in the native language will be remembered by more people if flashed on a commercial for 3-5 seconds. It just depends who you are trying to target and what you want your end result to be. If you buy an IDN in Russian... who cares if someone from Germany can't access it? Some might care (so go buy an ASCII), but if you're a Russian store putting up information for people living in Russia and can speak and type in Russian... BINGO.

Hope I made sense . Not downplaying or favoring any type of "domains"... they are ALL THE SAME TO ME IN THE END. Domains are domains.... depends on your intention and what you want to do with it... at least this is the way I see it. IDNs to me are sort of the "you can finally reach out to the rest of the world" path given in a native language... which is just dandy for me if I want to open some sort of oil company in the Middle East and want some Arabians to access the site only.

 

[Hurley4540]

Thanks for your reply

 

[Billidn]

I don't see IDNs as something that should necessarily be compared to ASCII... Over the last couple weeks I've had some get togethers with some people to discuss domains and IDNs came up and it was always clear that IDNs are available to target a certain audience that cannot be captured with the use of ASCII domains. If you have a domain like: abc123koreanautogroup.com compared to a shorter IDN (wish I could give a decent explain).com... the one in the native language will be remembered by more people if flashed on a commercial for 3-5 seconds. It just depends who you are trying to target and what you want your end result to be. If you buy an IDN in Russian... who cares if someone from Germany can't access it? Some might care (so go buy an ASCII), but if you're a Russian store putting up information for people living in Russia and can speak and type in Russian... BINGO.

Hope I made sense . Not downplaying or favoring any type of "domains"... they are ALL THE SAME TO ME IN THE END. Domains are domains.... depends on your intention and what you want to do with it... at least this is the way I see it. IDNs to me are sort of the "you can finally reach out to the rest of the world" path given in a native language... which is just dandy for me if I want to open some sort of oil company in the Middle East and want some Arabians to access the site only.

Bingo. IDNs are for the 80% of the world that does not speak English...with their purpose to make the internet a bit more user friendly, convenient and easy to navigate for them. IDNs are also great for internet commerce and business, allowing for multilingual website names in native languages. People will see the ads, billboards, and easily be able to remember the website names to later look up on their computers.

You can kind of get the idea...if for instance the internet urls were only accesable in Japanese. If you saw an ad for this on a roadside billboard would you be able to remember it, or even care if you saw it?

パフューム.com

Its equivalent in English: perfume.com

I guess we are all lucky the Chinese, Russian or Japanese didn't invent the internet and force all the URLs into their languages. :p

 

[Hurley4540]

I guess we are all lucky the Chinese, Russian or Japanese didn't invent the internet and force all the URLs into their languages. :p

I don't know what I would do LOL!

 

[mulligan]

I don't know what I would do LOL!

Learning is a big part of growing up .. but, you have to decide whether you want to learn.
There are many posts in this thread with information from very informed people ... LOL!
(Apart from this one .. Can't remember if I should put a LOL! here or not?)

 

[Hurley4540]

Ha well yeah it would take some learning if that was the case.

 

[mulligan]

Ha well yeah it would take some learning if that was the case.

Maybe I should have put 'growing up' inside these ''?

 

[Billidn]

I don't know what I would do LOL!

You would be VERY good with online translators...or name most of your websites with numbers like the Chinese do. That is easier for them to remember than English a-z.

Pick a few random numbers and try, got this Chinese site on the first try...hey now I'm 2 for 2.

http://www.4930.com/

http://www.51228.com/

I am sure the non-English speaking world will enjoy using IDNs.
Advertising agencies and marketing folks are going to have a heyday, or should I say payday!

Just saw this today so thought I would throw it into the discussion.
PARIS ICANN MEETING- Just reading the meeting schedules...looks like IDNs are the main overall topic among the various groups. Many countries are anticipating the big push from GAC as well as resolution on outstanding issues so they can giddy-up on the ICANN "fast track" program for their IDN.IDN.

http://par.icann.org/en/schedule

 

[lipps]

IMO
I dont think that anyone here can really tell you if ascii or idn is going to be better and more widely used at this time.

The fast track is on and idn is going to happen. This is a fact. How it takes off is yet to be seen. Users will decide.

We all know that English speaking people will not be be the major users of the domains. It is designed this way. Specific to local areas of language use. Fact

No one would expect the big players in ascii to embrase idn. That would be a foolish move financially. Idns will take away some of the potential buyers in an area.

What idn is doing is opening up a new market.

The infrastructure has to be there to support the user as well as the monetary resources to allow the user access. This is the biggest downfall to idns at this time. Many countries have not gotten this far. But they will.

I think Germany will take off big in idn and is on a solid path as well as China (only because of the amount of people that live in China), Japan, India and Korea. Those countries seem ready to go. I did not include the AE and RU areas just because of political concerns with foreign countries such as the US.

Here are the richest countries by household income. Expect to see growth in these areas. I would much rather have a domain in their native tongue than to have an ascii in their cctld

1 Luxembourg $ 68,800
2 Equatorial Guinea $ 50,200
3 United Arab Emirates $ 49,700
4 Norway $ 47,800
5 Ireland $ 43,600
6 United States $ 43,500
7 Andorra $ 38,800
8 Iceland $ 38,100
9 Denmark $ 37,000
10 Austria $ 35,500


Again its a new market. If you choose to take a chance on something that may progress do it, there are no guarantees. .mobi was going to be big it didnt happen, but then again I remember when you could get a LLL dot com for $75.

I wouldnt waste my time on anything now in an ascii cctld unless it had a good market or future and was a premium domain name. ie LL,NN, sex poker etc.... only because of the possibility of the future of idn. This may change.

Take if for what it is just my rants. Dont really give a crap if you agree or disagree.

 

[ThaiIDNs]

this thread just proves how far even "IDN interested" domainers have to go in understanding IDNs. I'm surprised people can even be bothered to counter those amazing non-IDN arguments that get touted repeatedly.

And oh yeah, remind me to go after all those Equatorial Guinea, Andorran, and US IDNs out there, they are surely top-10 material. Why bother with anything else?

IMO
I dont think that anyone here can really tell you if ascii or idn is going to be better and more widely used at this time.

The fast track is on and idn is going to happen. This is a fact. How it takes off is yet to be seen. Users will decide.

We all know that English speaking people will not be be the major users of the domains. It is designed this way. Specific to local areas of language use. Fact

No one would expect the big players in ascii to embrase idn. That would be a foolish move financially. Idns will take away some of the potential buyers in an area.

What idn is doing is opening up a new market.

The infrastructure has to be there to support the user as well as the monetary resources to allow the user access. This is the biggest downfall to idns at this time. Many countries have not gotten this far. But they will.

I think Germany will take off big in idn and is on a solid path as well as China (only because of the amount of people that live in China), Japan, India and Korea. Those countries seem ready to go. I did not include the AE and RU areas just because of political concerns with foreign countries such as the US.

Here are the richest countries by household income. Expect to see growth in these areas. I would much rather have a domain in their native tongue than to have an ascii in their cctld

1 Luxembourg $ 68,800
2 Equatorial Guinea $ 50,200
3 United Arab Emirates $ 49,700
4 Norway $ 47,800
5 Ireland $ 43,600
6 United States $ 43,500
7 Andorra $ 38,800
8 Iceland $ 38,100
9 Denmark $ 37,000
10 Austria $ 35,500


Again its a new market. If you choose to take a chance on something that may progress do it, there are no guarantees. .mobi was going to be big it didnt happen, but then again I remember when you could get a LLL dot com for $75.

I wouldnt waste my time on anything now in an ascii cctld unless it had a good market or future and was a premium domain name. ie LL,NN, sex poker etc.... only because of the possibility of the future of idn. This may change.

Take if for what it is just my rants. Dont really give a crap if you agree or disagree.

 

[Bramiozo]

Well, many of you falsely relating the search trends with the requirement of native keywords in domain names. Search trends are not directly related to domain names.

Search engines crawl and index websites based on content, and meta keywords. Even an ASCII domain name with content in native language gets indexed by Search Engines in the first page.

People search for particular keywords in their native language, and search engines fetch the matching web pages for those keywords whether the matching pages are from IDNs or ASCII domains.

Simple example:

Searching for "中国" yields nearly 1,750,000,000 search results and the very first result is GOV.CN which is not IDN.

It's well established that domain names influence SEO whether they are IDN's or not, for mediocre terms (say <100.000 search/month), the IDN will come into play.

Your example is false, for one 中国.com/net/org/info/cn are undeveloped and second there is way to much ad competition for such a term to land on the first page with a simple website without a considerable amount of backlinks.

Your posts in that thread I referred to speak for themselves and now again you are busy giving false arguments against IDN's whilst we can all bare witness to the fact that you yourself are active in IDN's.
Yes IDN's are behind ASCII at the moment, who has ever claimed otherwise and why would you emphasize it if you own IDN's yourself ?

About moscow.com, you'll be very suprised, just give it a few months...

 

[.tv]

Well Bramiozo,
Everyone has the rights to tell their opinions. Thanks for digging my posts and frequently attacking personally. :hehe:

I've invested in various niches, and IDNs are one of them. It doesn't mean I'm an IDN freak, and I wont accept your groundless arguments.

More than 50% of IDNs are undeveloped and many prime IDNs are parked. IDNs are far behind ASCIIs and this trend will continue forever.

If you wish, dig well... I like your childish behavior.

It's well established that domain names influence SEO whether they are IDN's or not, for mediocre terms (say <100.000 search/month), the IDN will come into play.

Your example is false, for one 中国.com/net/org/info/cn are undeveloped and second there is way to much ad competition for such a term to land on the first page with a simple website without a considerable amount of backlinks.

Your posts in that thread I referred to speak for themselves and now again you are busy giving false arguments against IDN's whilst we can all bare witness to the fact that you yourself are active in IDN's.
Yes IDN's are behind ASCII at the moment, who has ever claimed otherwise and why would you emphasize it if you own IDN's yourself ?

About moscow.com, you'll be very suprised, just give it a few months...

 

[Bramiozo]

Well Bramiozo,
Everyone has the rights to tell their opinions. Thanks for digging my posts and frequently attacking personally. :hehe:

I've invested in various niches, and IDNs are one of them. It doesn't mean I'm an IDN freak, and I wont accept your groundless arguments.

More than 50% of IDNs are undeveloped and many prime IDNs are parked. IDNs are far behind ASCIIs and this trend will continue forever.

If you wish, dig well... I like your childish behavior.

Who is childish here will be judged solely by others who read this thread, I have given ample arguments for my standpoints, you have given very little in return besides complaining about me looking into your post history. Personal attack, no, I just question your motives for reasons I already mentioned.


More than 50% of IDNs are undeveloped and many prime IDNs are parked. IDNs are far behind ASCIIs and this trend will continue forever.

:td: great, why don't you buy some more idn.tv then...

 

[.tv]

Who is childish here will be judged solely by others who read this thread, I have given ample arguments for my standpoints, you have given very little in return besides complaining about me looking into your post history. Personal attack, no, I just question your motives for reasons I already mentioned.


More than 50% of IDNs are undeveloped and many prime IDNs are parked. IDNs are far behind ASCIIs and this trend will continue forever.

:td: great, why don't you buy some more idn.tv then...

Look...

Investing in IDNs is just a diversification, and it doesn't mean I'm running behind them. I buy and sell .TV name because I'm interested in high profile keywords, whether they are IDNs or ASCII.

I have no motives other than saying my opinions.

Neither I hate IDNs nor I like them very much as most of the people here do.

Comparing it with ASCII names are nothing but comparing Oranges with Apples.

The value of IDNs will raise in the future, at that time the value of ASCII names will be exponentially increased.

So, IDNs will always lag behind ASCII names. :imho:

 

[Bramiozo]

Yes, previously I've asked some questions and Rhys has explained everything clearly, and I gave him a rep.

Rhys has provided the information I wanted in a clear way, and the discussion was almost over. Again RB has made some comments for which I've answered in the same manner as of his comments.



Well,
I'm not downplaying IDN.ASCII, since I do own several IDN.ASCII names including a few IDN.CN which are also IDN.ASCII names.

Thank you for monitoring each and every post I have made in the past. In that thread, I've posted in the seller's POV, which are not contrary to my statements posted here.

Still I am saying that IDN.ASCII names have huge potential in the reseller POV, as I've already sold a few names in the reseller market. This does not implies that the IDN.ASCII names have huge potential for end users, because there are already cctlds apart from tlds like .com/.net/.org with huge numbers of ASCII.cctld registrations going on everyday in every country.

My entire POV is purely based on what I am seeing in practical.

As per the current Internet trends, I have not seen any IDN.ASCII names which are getting uniques like ASCII names, but as per your explanation I agree that it would take some time.

I have not seen any historic sales in the xxx,xxx range for IDN.ASCII names.

I am still thinking that IDNs have SEO, and other ranking issues.

Do you really think IDN.ASCII names have huge potential than ASCII.ASCII names, if a capital city.com in native IDN sells for only $16,000?

There are more than 300 million Russians using the Russian language in their daily life. Moscow is the capital of Russia.

The IDN Москва.com was sold for a mere $16,000. If IDN.ASCII names have real potential, Geo names like Москва.com should have gone for $x,xxx,xxx or at least $xxx,xxx.

Many prime IDN names are in the hands of speculators and resellers.

I am still saying that IDNs are far behind the ASCII names.

Thanks for your comments on my posts. I think the discussion is turning to be an individual attack, and many of you describe me as a IDN hater. Thanks for that, and if you wish, keep on with your comments and remarks.

I'll give a more proper explanation of my standpoint, perhaps we are in agreement. Forget my last remark in the previous post..if you can :tu: .

You see IDN as a niche, so you do see there is a consistent demand, only the demand is almost constantly fractional compared to the overall market. Ok, perhaps I agree that at the moment IDN's form a niche market for the more technology aware online users who (perhaps by accident) have stumbled upon IDN's. Now we start to differ opinion because I see the accidental user turning into the average user for the local market, the average user who imo would rather go to a local website to buy products and who would rather type
in his/her native language. It's not about what the users CAN type and what they CAN memorize, it's about what users type more easily and remember more easily, it is about communicating local brands.

Don't you agree that niche markets are defined by subjects rather than technology, this IDN-technology already overlies all niches in domains (in terms of subjects), only it is limited in user base because there's little awareness. Also there is still uncertainty with regard to the .idn-tld's, this affects most non-latin markets.

Lastly, IDN's are seeing increased sales at increased prices, more names are getting developed and more money is invested, that is my practical experience which I do have (maybe you can look into my history ). Yes, most public sales are between resellers but the same holds for ASCII market.
I have sent plenty of pm's to resellers after they sold a name and plenty of times they would not release the price for my sales list. Just imagine end-users who do not want to stimulate domain speculation or simply large portfolioholders who strategically buy groups of names.

Yes, most IDN's are undeveloped but I think this is a combination of the dominant ownership of non-native resellers, the high cost of development and the lack of development skills with most investors. This is literally part of a development curve, all domains start undeveloped, in time development is sought slowly for a few names. When this pays off (taking several months) the reseller might consider developing more names. It's a slow process mainly because there are relatively few and relatively big IDN investors who lack the resources, the time and the knowledge to develop significant parts of their portfolio.
This is a problem that needs fixing, the same holds for ASCII-domains of course, a lot of top ascii-keywords end in a parking page, this will in time diminish overall value of domains...but ok I admit this is at the moment a clearer problem for IDN's.

Finally, you will see very large sales being completed by the end of this year, those sales will be in the $xx,xxx per name, max. and $xxx,xxx per group. This will incite more investments for domain acquisition and development, until that happens acquiring more IDN's will still be relatively cheap compared to ASCII.

No hard feelings.

 

[.tv]

Forget my last remark in the previous post..if you can :tu: .

No hard feelings at all. Learning new things everyday.

Thank you for the great post. Much appreciated.

 

[26122612]

Do you really think IDN.ASCII names have huge potential than ASCII.ASCII names, if a capital city.com in native IDN sells for only $16,000?

There are more than 300 million Russians using the Russian language in their daily life. Moscow is the capital of Russia.

The IDN Москва.com was sold for a mere $16,000. If IDN.ASCII names have real potential, Geo names like Москва.com should have gone for $x,xxx,xxx or at least $xxx,xxx.

It did.

 

[jacksonm]

The value of IDNs will raise in the future, at that time the value of ASCII names will be exponentially increased.

So, IDNs will always lag behind ASCII names. :imho:

You have based your judgment on a fundamentally incorrect assumption - the assumption that the economy of every country in the world operates in lock-step with the US economy.

Your other fundamentally incorrect assumption is that the buyers of IDN will be American investors or companies.


As the US dollar continues it's long and steep downward slide against foreign currencies, two things should be considered:

1. 1m USD is only 700k EUR (today)

2. You can't buy nearly the same amount of things in Europe with 700k EUR as you can in the USA with 1m USD.


And the other point is that the vast majority of American domain investors are just not interested in IDN. They will need to flush out all the english words from dot MOBI and dot ME and the next dot BLAH, because by and large they trade with other Americans and as you might know most of them only speak English.

American domain investors and companies are not the target buyers for our IDNs.

.

 

[Hurley4540]

Thanks for the great replies! Really appreciate it.