discuss How many actually like gTLDs or just want to make money?

[enterscope]

I remember when I first got into domaining I would jump on every new extension thinking I would get rich, then when renewals came around I was like "ok bye bye". Maybe I could have made a fortune on some of them, but ultimately it seems like the consensus is Dot Com is King.

Don't get me wrong, I see huge potential in a shift from .com to .anything with many niche markets being adequately contained in one space. However, .com is just so engrained in everyone's brains I think the nostalgic aspect of that will be hard to change.

My personal opinion is that the new gTLDs will be too confusing in advertising and people won't necessarily know that whatever.anything is a website. Then gTLD campaigns will have to start adding www.whatever.anything which will defeat the whole purpose and people will be like "aww heck, .com".

Do you actually think gTLDs will be standard or do you love .COM too much?

 

[dordomai]

i think that something important has been overlooked as the discussion here takes a very US-centric view.

.com is well known around the globe in any corner of the world.

I don't see how the new gtld could ever replace .com in other non english speaking countries. Do you think the dutch speaking population could ever support a wide variety of dutch language gtlds, so that any useful string combination in dutch could be created?

Economically this doesn't make any sense. It may be possible in the US but not in most other languages i would say. Unless the cost of running a registry and an extension get close to zero and internet infrastructure could support unlimited extensions.(which it can't at least at the moment I believe) this will never happen.

that is why i believe that awareness and acceptance of the new gtlds will be rather poor around the world. Globally the gtlds can never replace cctlds or .com or .net

In the US it would be at least economically possible to create enough extensions to fully (or at least a good part) replace .com

To really replace .com in the US i think they would have to release far more extensions than currently on the market so that there is really a key.word for every keyword.com

How many registries can the market support? Not an infinite number.

Another problem is that great.brand is longer and worse than brand.com IMO

Why bother using visit.marriott when you can use marriott.com?

At the moment the internet is not ready to do replace .com. The gtlds can only be an alternative niche extension.

 

[sOliver]

i think that in theory nightclub.co is at least as good as nightclub.com or even better.

In practice of course it is not and never will be. The same could be said about night.club.

That is an assumption. COM might always be the most trusted extension, but extensions like .co or .org have a lot of acceptance already and there is a market for these names. That's why they're valued, because of the trust associated with it.

When other extensions such as .movie gain acceptance, DOT COM automatically loses in value. It already has lost value because domainers are increasingly spending money elsewhere. Consumers are increasingly going elsewhere. By the end of the year google will start using .google, that's when things will get really interesting when all the corporations start using new gTLDS such as .apple, .microsoft, .google, .oracle ..

We're already seeing early-adopters paying huge premiums for names such as commercial.property. Why? Because they believe in a major shift.

At one point, google will have to factor in different extensions. New search engines may come into existence that focus solely on the new extensions and will put more weight on .villas, .blogs, .insurance, .sales, .news. Then a major shift really could happen. What we could see then is that certain extensions will become the go-to domain for that specific industry because the companies behind that industry realize they will increase traffic and sales by adopting new extensions. When that happens DOT COM is done because consumers by then recognize .insurance, .apartments, .condos and trust those extensions as much as they trusted DOT COM once. We will see a lot more gTLD sales then because companies are willing to pay for it because they can get a return on their investment.

All of this is just speculation, but the chances are good that it happens. Billions of dollar have been invested into this by corporations and small businesses alike. They all want to see a return. So Google, MSFT, Yandex, DDG have to bow to the will of the industry and eventually will change.

Of course we will see a lot of extensions die too. There are only so many industries and consumers. Consumers will keep buying useless extensions such as xyz and wtf or fun or pics because its entertaining. Real domainers will keep buying niche extensions for industries they believe in or domain hacks with value.

 

[Alice Wonder Miscreations]

New search engines may come into existence that focus solely on the new extensions and will put more weight on .villas, .blogs, .insurance, .sales, .news. Then a major shift really could happen.

Search engines want to produce the best results for the query. That matters far more than the extension ever will. It would not serve their cause to exclude results just because the extension is different.

.xxx tried that with a search just on their extension, nobody uses it.

I think initially some of the new extensions may be a slight hindrance on Google etc. but the most we will see is that they are seen as equivalent to .com - I don't see them ever being better than .com as far as search engines.

The content matters more than the extension and Google et al know if they don't give the user what the user is looking for, the user will switch to a search engine that does.

 

[Kate]

i think that something important has been overlooked as the discussion here takes a very US-centric view.

.com is well known around the globe in any corner of the world.

I don't see how the new gtld could ever replace .com in other non english speaking countries. Do you think the dutch speaking population could ever support a wide variety of dutch language gtlds, so that any useful string combination in dutch could be created?

You are completely right: new gTLDs don't stand a chance in markets where ccTLDs have overshadowed .com. The Dutch example you quoted, because the .nl TLD is very strong: 5.5M domains for 16M inhabitants.... (the population/domain ratio is higher than .de)

When other extensions such as .movie gain acceptance, DOT COM automatically loses in value. It already has lost value because domainers are increasingly spending money elsewhere. Consumers are increasingly going elsewhere.

Where is elsewhere ?
I don't know if you've been looking at reported sales, but evidently the established extensions continue to sell quite well. We are even witnessing record sales in .com. Some people are announcing the demise of .com, but the end users haven't got the memo.
Look for yourself the share of new extensions in domain sales vs the rest. Then you'll know where end users are putting their money.

By the end of the year google will start using .google, that's when things will get really interesting when all the corporations start using new gTLDS such as .apple, .microsoft, .google, .oracle ..

OK. Let's assume that Oracle starts using .oracle. Great.
But it doesn't change a thing for me as a business owner. I don't have my own extension. And that doesn't mean I want my own, and it doesn't mean that I will want to use a like a new TLD, like .top or .xyz or something else. No.
So for me it doesn't change a thing. It can change my perception of new extensions, but not the options that are actually available to me.

We're already seeing early-adopters paying huge premiums for names such as commercial.property. Why? Because they believe in a major shift.

I think you are focusing on a few spectacular sales, but that are not representative.
In the past, people have paid insane amounts for domains that are dead today. Nothing new. Remember the .mobi frenzy ? A paradigm shift was supposed to happen back then too.

At one point, google will have to factor in different extensions. New search engines may come into existence that focus solely on the new extensions and will put more weight on .villas, .blogs, .insurance, .sales, .news.

It doesn't work like this. Search engines classify websites based on contents and relevance. The domain names have to be developed, otherwise they are useless strings.

 

[dordomai]

When other extensions such as .movie gain acceptance, DOT COM automatically loses in value. It already has lost value because domainers are increasingly spending money elsewhere.

What stats is this based on? Namejet is selling almost no gtlds. Some domainers have jumped in this new market as it offers new opportunites. Nothing wrong with that.

Consumers are increasingly going elsewhere.

Stats?

We have 335 new gtld websites the Alexa top 100k. So about 0.3% of consumers are going to the ngtlds. In reality it is probably less since almost none of them are high traffic websites. So you may have 0.1% of consumers going elsewhere.

By the end of the year google will start using .google, that's when things will get really interesting when all the corporations start using new gTLDS such as .apple, .microsoft, .google, .oracle ..

They have also used .ws names. Using them doesn't mean that they will redirect to key.word instead of their man keyword.com brand

We're already seeing early-adopters paying huge premiums for names such as commercial.property. Why? Because they believe in a major shift.

We really don't know the motivation behind the purchases. I think .mobi had more six figure sales than the new gtlds so far.

There will always be purchases like that. Someone paid 500k for pussy.xxx a few years back. Why? I don't know they probably had a lot of cash and i didn't mind paying a lot of money.

I think commercial.property was 25k. Look at other 25k Namedia sales in the past. They often sell shit for that price.

The .com would have been priced at 250-500k

At one point, google will have to factor in different extensions. New search engines may come into existence that focus solely on the new extensions and will put more weight on .villas, .blogs, .insurance, .sales, .news.

A search engine that will solely focus on .keyword domains wouldn't make much sense. Only a very small percentage of internet users would ever use a search engine that excludes +99% of all content worldwide. Even if the gtlds had a substantial portion of all content worldwide i wouldn't really see any benefit in excluding .com and cctlds from the results. How would that help? Why would one do this or want this?

Then a major shift really could happen. What we could see then is that certain extensions will become the go-to domain for that specific industry because the companies behind that industry realize they will increase traffic and sales by adopting new extensions

.

How can we know that they will increase traffic and sales? Any stats? Most internet users don't understand the new extensions. If you advertise today you will lose a lot of money and traffic.

So far we know that o.co was a major failure and harmed traffic and sales.

When that happens DOT COM is done because consumers by then recognize .insurance, .apartments, .condos and trust those extensions as much as they trusted DOT COM once. We will see a lot more gTLD sales then because companies are willing to pay for it because they can get a return on their investment.

Trust comes from exposure. How many times have people used .com and how many times have they used ngtlds?

All of this is just speculation, but the chances are good that it happens. Billions of dollar have been invested into this by corporations and small businesses alike. They all want to see a return. So Google, MSFT, Yandex, DDG have to bow to the will of the industry and eventually will change.

I am not so sure that they have invested billions. Google one of the biggest companies on earth with loads of cash to spend was reluctant to spend more than a few millions and lost auctions. They could have easily bought any string they wanted to but choose not to. How much cash did Microsoft or Yandex spend? Not that much i think.

If they had major plans they could have bought all extensions and launch their own internet. Google is spending so much cash on various projects nowadays. This doesn't seem to be a high priority thing for them.

How many billions have been spent on branding .com websites in the past 15 years? Why would companies give up their .com brands and how could the spending spending on .com brands even be compared to the ngtlds or made undone with a few ad campaigns?

 

[Alice Wonder Miscreations]

How many billions have been spent on branding .com websites in the past 15 years? Why would companies give up their .com brands

They won't give up their .com brands.

Many startups though are using .io and I think we will see some shifting to ngTLDs instead.

I think also that companies will brand keyword.

microsoft.support is better than support.microsoft.com IMHO. Especially since in English we read left to right. So the ngTLDs will often be used in addition to .com where .com already exists.

 

[enterscope]

Yes in theory microsoft.support looks better, but will people really know what you're talking about when you say "Go to Microsoft dot support" ? Most people will be like, "What's Microsoft dot support?" amirite?

 

[Alice Wonder Miscreations]

Yes in theory microsoft.support looks better, but will people really know what you're talking about when you say "Go to Microsoft dot support" ? Most people will be like, "What's Microsoft dot support?" amirite?

I don't think that is as big of an issue as you think it is.
Have there been any case studies done?

 

[sOliver]

If google starts using .google, the industry will change significantly (in my opinion) but that's a big IF.

Right now you cant look at numbers but you need to evaluate the adoption rate. Just think about Bitcoins and how that took off. Bitcoin may still die (and probably will) but that's because they don't have the backing of the banks and are just one industry.

"Trust comes from exposure." - exactly, and what do you think happens right now on live television?

In this case we have many industries coming together. Big movies are starting to use .movie now - this will drive consumer and industry adoption in a big way because its on television. This is really like domino now. Everything coming together.

I also don't like new gTLD's and will always prefer COM and NET but one has to realize that they might succeed even if we domainers are currently in "super denial mode". And I'd rather invest a few grand into quality names than be on the outside looking in.

If you don't believe in them that's great too, then dont invest, but we've already seen that names such as transfer.money can fetch good money. It's highly speculative but that also means the ROI can potentially be so much greater. Just don't act like a fool and buy two-word names. One-word premium names will always have a market.

 

[Alice Wonder Miscreations]

bitcoin won't die. It doesn't need the backing of the industry. I can send money to relatives in other parts of the world instantly and without ridiculous fees, and that will be what keeps bitcoin alive for a very long time. Western Union, their failure to adapt and become a bitcoin exchange is going to cause their failure.

Many domainers have a bias against the .coms. With domaining, you can have a huge portfolio of domains at high prices that make you appear to be wealthy even though many of them have been on the market unsold for years.

But with the new gTLDs the actual value of those domains is revealed, their only real value comes from limited supply but new gTLDs create a much bigger supply. So domainers have to believe that the new gTLDs won't make it and their precious .com domains are still part of a high value limited supply. Confirmation bias clouds their vision of the future that is coming.

Some domainers understand this, they may adapt and survive. Many will go out of business wondering where they went wrong.

 

[forge]

I think what's driving the unsurpassed aftermarket for 4L dotcoms, largely thanks to Chinese investors, is the expectation that the .COM namespace will spontaneously and unexpectedly implode.

 

[forge]

Come on, just watch 95% of the .CLUB sales and you will see that it's the combination that matters.

These combinations of keyword PLUS TLD works perfectly well in the Google's SERP as well!

Have some examples?

 

[Fancy.domains]

Have some examples?

I have some studies to refer to. Here is one:

http://www.dnjournal.com/archive/lowdown/2015/dailyposts/20150213.htm

 

[JB Lions]

I have some studies to refer to. Here is one:

http://www.dnjournal.com/archive/lowdown/2015/dailyposts/20150213.htm

That one was gone thru already somewhere on this forum, try this:

http://interbrand.com/en/views/234/why-domain-extensions-matter-for-online-success

Comments like:

"So domainers have to believe that the new gTLDs won't make it and their precious .com domains are still part of a high value limited supply. Confirmation bias clouds their vision of the future that is coming."

Except we have these things call stats, sales, usage etc. And then, that doesn't even make sense. The best doesn't worry about second rate, or random niche extension sales or usage. It could never beat .com.

I think there is a common thread about those who invest in new gtlds while attempting to say something negative about .com, those that invest in hacks and things like that. A common feeling there are no good .coms left or the knowledge they don't have any.

sOliver's post above is completely ridiculous, wouldn't know where to start. Taking a .movie usage, only because they couldn't get the .com as some sort of sign. Or a company buying up it's own name like the Pro.flowers or that autism thread as some sort of sign their names will start selling. You can find exceptions with anything, a lot of this is just grasping at hope.

Somewhere else somebody talking about startups and .io, when it was only 4% of startups using .io in the last batch, and 76% using.com.

http://dngeek.com/2015/06/newly-funded-startups-and-their-domain-names-week-24/

There is a lot of pushing reality aside to believe some of the stuff being posted.

 

[Alice Wonder Miscreations]

There is nothing technical about .com that makes it better. It's all hype and hype is easily changed with marketing.

In fact using something other than .com may make your domain name stand out in the mind of customers because it is different. Market it as hip to be different (Apple did just that quite successfully in the late 90s leading to the first iMac) and you have a winner.

Sure .com right now has stronger numbers. You win by seeing what will have the numbers 10 years from now, not what has the numbers now.

When Apple started its Think Different campaign, their shares were around $10. Not much value, and nobody thought they would overtake Microsoft.

 

[JB Lions]

There is nothing technical about .com that makes it better. It's all hype and hype is easily changed with marketing.

This is all you need to say. It demonstrates a lack of all kinds of things. Are you aware of the internet? Of how many regs, top sites are on .com? And who exactly is going to compete with .com? All hype? It's reality. You're demonstrating what I just said in my last post, the pushing of reality aside.

 

[Alice Wonder Miscreations]

Of course I'm aware of the Internet. In the 80s I was dialing in to the UC Berkeley BSD game machine over an acoustic coupler to play adventure and rogue, I was lucky enough to have a father who was part of the development of BSD.

Of course .com has more registrations, it has been around since the beginning of DNS.

And there is absolutely nothing technical about it that makes it superior to any of the other TLDs - well, except for the few ccTLDs that do not support DNSSEC.

Momentum and hype is all it has.

It's not like a Jaguar that is a physical product retaining its value because of the fine engineering and craftsmanship that make it. A .com domain is simply an entry in a DNS zone file that is used for various DNS records. That's all it is.

 

[JB Lions]

Of course I'm aware of the Internet. In the 80s I was dialing in to the UC Berkeley BSD game machine over an acoustic coupler to play adventure and rogue, I was lucky enough to have a father who was part of the development of BSD.

Of course .com has more registrations, it has been around since the beginning of DNS.

And there is absolutely nothing technical about it that makes it superior to any of the other TLDs - well, except for the few ccTLDs that do not support DNSSEC.

Momentum and hype is all it has.

It's not like a Jaguar that is a physical product retaining its value because of the fine engineering and craftsmanship that make it. A .com domain is simply an entry in a DNS zone file that is used for various DNS records. That's all it is.

You keep talking about technical like that is supposed to mean something. If you can't understand why .com is superior, when even people not in this business can figure that one out, that's not a good look for you.

 

[Alice Wonder Miscreations]

I told you why .com is currently perceived as superior. Hype.

no_url_shorteners is a .com that gets far less usage than no_url_shorteners even though it is a .com and was first.

Why? Because Internet users understand that a link doesn't need to end in .com.

 

[JB Lions]

I told you why .com is currently perceived as superior. Hype.

no_url_shorteners is a .com that gets far less usage than no_url_shorteners even though it is a .com and was first.

Why? Because Internet users understand that a link doesn't need to end in .com.

It's reality, hahaha. Those reg numbers are real. The top sites in the world are real. And you've yet to give me 1 extension that is supposed to compete with .com. It can't be the niche extensions, they will never do big numbers. What general ones out there are going to compete? .link? .xyz? what?

One of your problems is you bought into the hype that these were competitors to .com. I understand why the people who are selling these went that route, again, just read this thread. They knew people would actually eat it up. .xyz, the next .com. Let me know when it even hits 1% of a .com, bump this thread if/when that happens. It dropped about 140,000 this month alone, never hit a million. 806,000 now - https://namestat.org/xyz

 

[Alice Wonder Miscreations]

Reality: Steve Ballmer, former CEO of Microsoft, mocked the iPhone because it didn't have a physical keyboard, and users wanted a physical keyboard. He lacked vision to bring Microsoft into the future of computing devices.

If you don't see that the new gTLDs are the wave of the future, I see that as a Ballmer mistake.

It should be obvious - the .com namespace is all but used up. The average length of new registrations is getting longer and longer. The new gTLDs allow for short domain names again. Short domain names that are easy to remember are particularly useful in a mobile market.

The new gTLDs are the obvious future, just as touchscreen keyboards should have been to Ballmer.

 

[JB Lions]

Reality: Steve Ballmer, former CEO of Microsoft, mocked the iPhone because it didn't have a physical keyboard, and users wanted a physical keyboard. He lacked vision to bring Microsoft into the future of computing devices.

If you don't see that the new gTLDs are the wave of the future, I see that as a Ballmer mistake.

It should be obvious - the .com namespace is all but used up. The average length of new registrations is getting longer and longer. The new gTLDs allow for short domain names again. Short domain names that are easy to remember are particularly useful in a mobile market.

The new gTLDs are the obvious future, just as touchscreen keyboards should have been to Ballmer.

Reality is you're trying to find success elsewhere and tie it into new gtlds when you know I can easily find the opposite. No shortage of failures out there. Has nothing to do with new gtlds.

"It should be obvious - the .com namespace is all but used up."

Which is another point I brought up in the previous post. I thought the same in my first year, most do. It's only when you get active in the Aftermarket, NJ, Snap etc, when you realize you can still get good .coms all day long. There is one blog that list companies buying good .coms for a few hundred to a few thousand all day long as well. The example you guys like to use is always some 3 or 4 word superlong .com, trying to make it out like it's the only .coms you can get nowadays, well that's bs. It's silly when you post it. That you can't get good .coms anymore is also used by companies to sell new gtlds and once again, you guys eat it up. Most of the stuff you said, is just parroting their marketing.

You can get good ngTLDs all day long without having to pay high domainer markups.

Good keywords, not good domains. There is a difference.

 

[Alice Wonder Miscreations]

You can get good ngTLDs all day long without having to pay high domainer markups.

Good keywords, not good domains. There is a difference.

You are defining good domain as .com, hence anything not .com isn't good to you.

There is no logical reason for that definition, it is just current hype and a lack of vision to the future.

People don't want to hunt around for a good domain being sold on aftermarket websites where they then have to transfer it to their registrar, sometimes after a required ICANN waiting period, sometimes involving an escrow, etc.

People just want to go a registrar, e.g. namecheap, and register it.

 

[zycfour]

I like 'em nowadays. Those nice two word combos, book.club, city.guide, hotel.reviews, and so forth, just makes sense. Looks good, too. Actually, now that I typed the aforementioned in, I remembered that I like max 5-letter nGTLDs and anything beyond that just feels a little clumsy.

And I'm already seeing them being utilized in various niches. And in search results, in contrary to what I assumed, the balanced ones look very professional and inviting to my eyes.

So I like them and see pretty much zero obstacles for them to become widespread.

When .com came out in the beginning, it's legit for a company to register ****.com(pany), and later people realized that they could register . com domains without having to be a company. The same could happen with a nTLD that is more generic, unlike .flower or .sucks, no offence. Not many options left in classic TLDs after all, and surely is getting fewer and fewer.

 

[Alice Wonder Miscreations]

Yes I think .web will be successful as an alternate to .com for domains that don't fit the more specialized gTLDs.