Dynadot

discuss Here's why .XYZ will fail

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There has been a lot of hype lately for .xyz because of a small number of big sales. I see a lot of people overextending themselves and pouring a lot of their budget in this extension. Personally, I believe .xyz is doomed to fail. Maybe I'll eat my words, maybe I won't. Here is my case for why I think .xyz will fail:

1) Low number of sales

According to Namebio.com, in the last two years there have been only 867 sales. Only 359 of those have been over $1,000. Yes, these are only reported sales, but unimpressive none the less. Now, compare this with the number of .xyz registered in the past two years, and this number will seem even more minuscule. Most of the names that sold were also premium one word names.

2) No space for innovation

Which brings me to my next point. Because domainers are rushing to register every single available .xyz domain that is decent, it leaves little space for businesses to set up under the extension and promote the extension. This exposure is crucial in order for the TLD to grow. It's getting to the point where you can't find a decent two word .xyz and that's not because they are taken by businesses. Which will certainly stunt its growth.

3) It's ugly

Aesthetically and phonetically .xyz is ugly. It's three syllables, unlike .com, .me, .net, .co... Which makes it harder to say. It looks horrible when it's part of a design or even just typing it. It feels cheap.

4) People don't trust it

Because of all the reasons above and the cheap initial registration costs, there aren't enough legitimate businesses using the extension and there are lot of spammy sites. Starting to type in Google "is .xyz" gives a first suggestion of "is .xyz safe". Same goes for ".xyz domain" (third suggestion).

5) It's not early

I know many of you will say that it's still early for .xyz. But it isn't. It has been around since 2014. It had some initial hype because of Google using it and that hype hasn't materialized. I don't think it ever will.

That's just my two cents. What do you guys think?
 
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The views expressed on this page by users and staff are their own, not those of NamePros.
Which brings me to my next point. Because domainers are rushing to register every single available .xyz domain that is decent, it leaves little space for businesses to set up under the extension and promote the extension. This exposure is crucial in order for the TLD to grow. It's getting to the point where you can't find a decent two word .xyz and that's not because they are taken by businesses. Which will certainly stunt its growth.

Hang on, your first criticism is that they don't sell for much (so they're affordable to small businesses) and this criticism is that somehow businesses are prevented from registering names.

It's like saying .COM will "fail" because 160 million (40x as many as XYZ) have been taken.

Aesthetically and phonetically .xyz is ugly. It's three syllables, unlike .com, .me, .net, .co... Which makes it harder to say. It looks horrible when it's part of a design or even just typing it. It feels cheap.

I used to hate XYZ, before all the hype (with this and Google), and considered it just another trash extension, a stupid and meaningless combo of letters, which it was, only used by spammers and scammers because it was dirt cheap (which is why it's now blocked and filtered by so much of the internet).

However I now, with hundreds of atrocious extensions, don't believe that it looks bad, in fact it looks better than most.

And although the pivot towards "yeah it totally, like, means 3D and Metaverse" is sad and desperate, especially after all the other stuff people have tried to claim it means (including nothing/everything), I think it's a gimmick that might actually catch on.

There's no other reason to have an XYZ, as with IO, where the relation to tech (input/output) is even more banal and tenuous, but which still caught on with Silicon Valley idiots.

The letters XYZ are genuinely known to tech people working in 3D and people with money do like to pay for concepts, however weak they are. And at a certain point it doesn't matter why people are using XYZ any more, just that enough high profile and/or 'cool' sites are.

Are there, even now, more major companies, in major/emerging marketplaces, using .NET, .ME or .CO than using .XYZ?

IMO .NET died a long time ago, .ME is something for personal pages, other than one domain only (despicable.me, and I may have just imagined that one), and the single selling point of .CO (other than being cheap, like XYZ), being a typo of .COM, has long been a point against it.

So, can XYZ fail at what? It's just a domain extension.

Obviously it won't overtake .COM, despite what the looniest cultists here pretend to think, because nothing will overtake .COM. It has about 150 million more registrations than whatever extension is next, which sure as hell isn't XYZ.

It doesn't have to do that though. What it can realistically do is become the extension of choice for a certain market, or range of markets, metaverse/crypto/NFT/whatever.

That is a possibility, and there's no point in denying it when already major sales from major players in certain areas are occurring.
 
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Hang on, your first criticism is that they don't sell for much (so they're affordable to small businesses) and this criticism is that somehow businesses are prevented from registering names.

It's like saying .COM will "fail" because 160 million (40x as many as XYZ) have been taken.



I used to hate XYZ, before all the hype (with this and Google), and considered it just another trash extension, a stupid and meaningless combo of letters, which it was, only used by spammers and scammers because it was dirt cheap (which is why it's now blocked and filtered by so much of the internet).

However I now, with hundreds of atrocious extensions, don't believe that it looks bad, in fact it looks better than most.

And although the pivot towards "yeah it totally, like, means 3D and Metaverse" is sad and desperate, especially after all the other stuff people have tried to claim it means (including nothing/everything), I think it's a gimmick that might actually catch on.

There's no other reason to have an XYZ, as with IO, where the relation to tech (input/output) is even more banal and tenuous, but which still caught on with Silicon Valley idiots.

The letters XYZ are genuinely known to tech people working in 3D and people with money do like to pay for concepts, however weak they are. And at a certain point it doesn't matter why people are using XYZ any more, just that enough high profile and/or 'cool' sites are.

Are there, even now, more major companies, in major/emerging marketplaces, using .NET, .ME or .CO than using .XYZ?

IMO .NET died a long time ago, .ME is something for personal pages, other than one domain only (despicable.me, and I may have just imagined that one), and the single selling point of .CO (other than being cheap, like XYZ), being a typo of .COM, has long been a point against it.

So, can XYZ fail at what? It's just a domain extension.

Obviously it won't overtake .COM, despite what the looniest cultists here pretend to think, because nothing will overtake .COM. It has about 150 million more registrations than whatever extension is next, which sure as hell isn't XYZ.

It doesn't have to do that though. What it can realistically do is become the extension of choice for a certain market, or range of markets, metaverse/crypto/NFT/whatever.

That is a possibility, and there's no point in denying it when already major sales from major players in certain areas are occurring.
No, the first criticism is that there aren't many sales, certainly, compared to the number of registered extensions. And it's certainly not cheap to acquire the names that ARE for sale.

I agree with your other point in finding a use of it's own. But I think it will fail in becoming one of the top TLDs and will become another .mobi .me .any other extension that had some hype and then slowly died out. And it will be due to the reasons I pointed out.
 
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Well you said "Only 359 of those have been over $1,000", so it was about price too, and you're right. I've posted about it myself. The top 50 priced words are not really objectively that different from the bottom 50.

stir.xyz sells for $xx,xxx and fry.xyz sells for $xxx. And I think the lower prices are more illustrative of the market, especially as they aren't concentrated one one high profile seller.

There was a thread here recently where someone offered (if I understood correctly) 88 pretty decent XYZs for $60 or something, and it took about a week of bumps before it was sold.

It has potential to be a niche extension, but it depends on how big the 'niche' is or becomes.

As for "top TLDs", IMO NET qualifies only because of its history at this point; it's relatively expensive and there's no reason to use it even for networking related sites.

And I need to be convinced CO has ever been significantly popular anywhere outside the world of domainers using 99cent promos.

The only CO site I can think of/remember is rocketreach and only because I could never initially find it again, because I always remembered it as IO.

(I'm sure people who are into those extensions will take this post completely objectively, of course.)
 
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Highly recommend not to invest in any .xyz domains. Let others buy .xyz that is considered to be having low sales and no space for innovation, ugly, not trustworthy, and old by someone.
 
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Thanks @william for an honest breakdown of your opinions of .XYZ.

Nothing wrong with .XYZ being part of a portfolio, but if you want to make money from this extension now is not the time to invest unless you can get a combination of stellar domain + no premium registration + cheap initial price to invest. If you can't get this combination then it's probably too late to make money from .XYZ, if there was an opportunity al all IMHO.

On the point about it being ugly, I have to agree. It's like a child's take on a domain name extension. Some blockchain companies have it as their extension of choice, which is somewhat exciting, but people that care about bitcoin are pretty few and far between in truth, but the companies that are in the game do have a lot of money... that money has come from speculators from the few that believe it's a good investment and not just a scam but all they want is to just make money. Big bubble, bubbles never end well.
 
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.xyz is театр кукол ( teatr kukol ) which means puppet theatre in Russian. There's a puppet show called Balaganchik. In St. Petersburg in 1880 a balagan of a new type known as “entertainment and edification” was organized on the Marsovo Pole. Its artistic director was A. Ia. Alekseev-Iakovlev, who was connected with the folk theater. Many subsequently well-known artists, such as A. L. and V. L. Durov, I. S. Radunskii (Bim), E. A. Lepkovskii, and others, began their careers in the balagan. The balagan existed until the 1930’s, at which time it was showing variety entertainment. In the figurative sense, human activity which resembles a balagan show; foolish, coarse conduct. Or in other words .xyz domain name extension. If you own many .xyz domains and make lots of money well done. It's not a hate or jealousy thread. You got on the bandwagon at the right time and took some customers for a ride. I think what @william is saying is that bandwagon might be about to crash into a giant thorny cactus.
 
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Not a big fan of .xyz but what is interesting is - web 3.0 is adopting that extension quite well and who knows this can be as big as .io in the future. (Too early to say but why not)
 
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Too early to say but why not
Why to early to say? http://www.releasewire.com/press-releases/xyz-the-next-com-launches-globally-514835.htm said .xyz would be the next .com. That was eight years ago. Mahawhwhwhahahahah!!!!!!!
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Some people don't care much if it crashes and burns tomorrow because they have already made their money. Others, like myself, are regretting the missed opportunity.
 
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Not a big fan of .xyz but what is interesting is - web 3.0 is adopting that extension quite well and who knows this can be as big as .io in the future. (Too early to say but why not)
.Xyz has a leading position in web3 as it is the only domain extension that can show profiles of NFT collectors simply by adding ".xyz" at the end of ".eth" in web browsers.

For example:
  • nick.eth --> show Google search pages (result may vary based on your browser's settings)
  • nick.eth.xyz --> show a profile page of a NFT collector
  • nick.eth.[OtherExtension] --> show an error page
 
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You talked me into registering a 2 word xyz. Thank you Happy new year Swetha!
I’ll wish you that again in April. I live very close to a temple. Celebrate.
 
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The only way to sell xyz domain is hardcore full time outbound. It would never work if you just bought 20k xyz domains and waited for buyers to come to you like it often does with .com. If people can make money with them, awesome.
 
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Thank God you didn't say all the reported sales are fake.

Other than that you do raise some good points, specially the gold rush. But then, xyz or not, some people will continue to register crap domains. While some people see a trend and take calculated risk.



Another thing to look at is some people can't understand wholesale prices vs retail. Many of the Low XXXX sales are all wholesale. Almost 100% of the reported sales on SAV. They are are picked up by the same few domainers, so we can't keep those and the Retail sales in the same basket when we compare.
 
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You talked me into registering a 2 word xyz. Thank you Happy new year Swetha!
I’ll wish you that again in April. I live very close to a temple. Celebrate.
Oh no what have you gone and done mate?
 
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.xyz will die just like .biz. Mark. My. Words.
 
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I sold few domain names years ago in total amount of over 250000 USD & i thinking ..why not to buy some of my names with good price/s & i put some of my friends to buy my names after give money to friends to pay for 😉🤫
 
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I sold few domain names years ago in total amount of over 250000 USD & i thinking ..why not to buy some of my names with good price/s & i put some of my friends to buy my names after give money to friends to pay for 😉🤫
Are you a SHE???
 
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2) No space for innovation

Which brings me to my next point. Because domainers are rushing to register every single available .xyz domain that is decent, it leaves little space for businesses to set up under the extension and promote the extension. This exposure is crucial in order for the TLD to grow. It's getting to the point where you can't find a decent two word .xyz and that's not because they are taken by businesses. Which will certainly stunt its growth.
For this point 2) .com is even worse you can’t even find decent 3 words, the reality is end users really don’t care about it.




1642956233806.jpeg

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Ps. The web3 is real, .xyz is real.
 
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There has been a lot of hype lately for .xyz because of a small number of big sales. I see a lot of people overextending themselves and pouring a lot of their budget in this extension. Personally, I believe .xyz is doomed to fail. Maybe I'll eat my words, maybe I won't. Here is my case for why I think .xyz will fail:

1) Low number of sales

According to Namebio.com, in the last two years there have been only 867 sales. Only 359 of those have been over $1,000. Yes, these are only reported sales, but unimpressive none the less. Now, compare this with the number of .xyz registered in the past two years, and this number will seem even more minuscule. Most of the names that sold were also premium one word names.

2) No space for innovation

Which brings me to my next point. Because domainers are rushing to register every single available .xyz domain that is decent, it leaves little space for businesses to set up under the extension and promote the extension. This exposure is crucial in order for the TLD to grow. It's getting to the point where you can't find a decent two word .xyz and that's not because they are taken by businesses. Which will certainly stunt its growth.

3) It's ugly

Aesthetically and phonetically .xyz is ugly. It's three syllables, unlike .com, .me, .net, .co... Which makes it harder to say. It looks horrible when it's part of a design or even just typing it. It feels cheap.

4) People don't trust it

Because of all the reasons above and the cheap initial registration costs, there aren't enough legitimate businesses using the extension and there are lot of spammy sites. Starting to type in Google "is .xyz" gives a first suggestion of "is .xyz safe". Same goes for ".xyz domain" (third suggestion).

5) It's not early

I know many of you will say that it's still early for .xyz. But it isn't. It has been around since 2014. It had some initial hype because of Google using it and that hype hasn't materialized. I don't think it ever will.

That's just my two cents. What do you guys think?
How about the super high registration fee increases based on a valuation model xyz domain owners have no control over?
 
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Yaknow what, you right.

What a refreshing thread of realization.
 
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  1. High reg fees
  2. Untrusted after eight years
  3. Confusing
  4. Not used by any global company
  5. Unprofessional
  6. Linked to spam and malware
  7. Doesn't add anything
 
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@karmaco why is .xyz different to .biz?
 
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@karmaco why is .xyz different to .biz?
Biz doesn’t have numerous crypto and blockchain projects running on it.

Better yet ask Jack Dorsey why he picked this extension.
 
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