discuss Here's why .XYZ will fail

[william]

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?

 

[Mr.company]

Sharing the same cake , creates incentives that are paid off on the backend , and creates exposure.

 

[jmcc]

Concentrating on domain name sales misses the bigger picture. The number of domain names registered in a TLD is no longer a reliable metric. There are three things that happen when a gTLD fails. The first is that new registration volume collapses. That's easy to measure from the monthly registry reports that are published by ICANN. The second is that renewals drop because people no longer think it is worth paying the renewal fee. This is also easy to measure from the registry reports. The third is that the development of new websites collapses and websites on the gTLD stop being updated. That is a lot more difficult to measure.

ICANN even has a procedure for handling failed gTLDs (Emergency Back End Operator/EBERO). The theory was that a failed gTLD would be put into EBERO so that a successor registry could be found and the gTLD sold. So far, only .WED has been moved to EBERO. Other new gTLDs that failed to meet expectations were bought by larger players. Some of Frank Schilling's Uniregistry gTLDs were bought by XYZ at auction and their transfer to XYZ has just been approved by ICANN.

The problem with the OP/initial post is that there is no definition of what constitutes a failed gTLD. At the moment, the .XYZ is very far from being a failed gTLD and it has been one of the more successful new gTLDs. It is not .COM or a ccTLD but there is web usage in the gTLD.

Regards...jmcc

 

[lock]

It is cheaper to use a domain and ranking it for seo than buying traffic so these extensions will still sell as long as people are using them this way.

 

[DOMAIN ILLUMINATI]

The number of domain names registered in a TLD is no longer a reliable metric.

Absolutely ...

... at least in terms of measuring a TLD by the meaning of its name - which is, at least for the enduser, of course more important than the number of registrations in that TLD and this is a point which many com fanboys don't want to see, despite the fact that com, as an abbreviation for a certain word, is, strictly considered, by definition, in fact a non generic TLD (even ICANN doesn't get it and says it is generic) while xyz is a "synonym for everything" and thus more generic than any other TLD as it stands not only for "commercial" ...

... so, again, I can consider this thread's title only as a joke.