debate How popular will the nTLDs be within the next 3 years?

[Steven Pilditch]

How popular will the nTLDs be within the next 3 years?

I want your honest feedback and I am looking for mixed opinions, for a balance debate. There is not right or wrong answers.

 

[doubleU]

Advertising $ has to provide a good return on investment (ROI).
Spending money to get a foothold against .com, .net, .org, cctlds in the minds of billions of people would be an uphill battle and, eventually, a big waste.

Most advertising is wastage IMHO, we the consumers eventually have to pay the price for this through the products and services we purchase.

If you buy a top brand trainer, how much of this $ is going around your foot ?

 

[Haris]

I was thinking about starting my own extension. Can anyone guide me how can I do it and will I have to pay ICANN or IANA to do it?

 

[Wannabean]

This is probably a huge deal for Americans, a lot of whom know nothing other than .com.

In Europe ccTLD's are much more popular than .com. There's also plenty of .org, .biz and others around. Basically it's not going to be a problem in places where people are already aware multiple extensions exist and are legit.

I can see good adoption in Europe and other places within 2 years. The USA will catch up over time.

 

[Recons.Com]

It still will be a problem.
The defaults are normally:
- For anything global/international commercial .com
- For anything non-profit, humanitarian, agencies, communities etc. anywhere around the world .org
- for anything local market oriented in some of the big markets like UK, Germany etc. local cctld

For the above, all somebody has to know is the name of the organization/company/agency etc. then they just assume it is .com, .org., .de (co.uk etc.) respectively.

If you have .net, .biz etc. then you have to make sure that it is clearly communicated to your customers/partners/providers what your extension is and even then they will probably forget and still type in the default. Hence the "type-in" traffic very often.

If you have the new domain extension, not only you have to communicate, but also explain/educate what the hell it is and why exactly you are using it.

 

[Wannabean]

It still will be a problem.
The defaults are normally:
- For anything global/international commercial .com
- For anything non-profit, humanitarian, agencies, communities etc. anywhere around the world .org
- for anything local market oriented in some of the big markets like UK, Germany etc. local cctld

For the above, all somebody has to know is the name of the organization/company/agency etc. then they just assume it is .com, .org., .de (co.uk etc.) respectively.

If you have .net, .biz etc. then you have to make sure that it is clearly communicated to your customers/partners/providers what your extension is and even then they will probably forget and still type in the default. Hence the "type-in" traffic very often.

If you have the new domain extension, not only you have to communicate, but also explain/educate what the hell it is and why exactly you are using it.

Would say it's a million times easier to market and for consumers to type dontforgetmy.name than dontforgetmyname.com/.us/.org/etc. I'm seeing tv ads for a site using a .name as I write.

I think it's only domainers, web masters and site owners who think rigidly along the lines of your 'defaults.' Show that to the average person and they will have no idea what your talking about and won't care either. They'll type in whatever they see marketed.

Oh and for a nGTLD all the customer needs to know is the name of the business because that's all you type with a dot in the middle. nGTLD's actually remove extension confusion rather than making it worse.

 

[Recons.Com]

Right... People around the world will remember hundreds of new extensions and will immediately recognize when they see the word in the end of a brand name and will automatically know that the company's website is there. Sure, why not?!

Tell me, as a professional, how many of those names you know by heart? And even for the ones you know, when I say "Go to US News and read about ..." do you type in us.news or usnews.com?

 

[Wannabean]

Right... People around the world will remember hundreds of new extensions and will immediately recognize when they see the word in the end of a brand name and will automatically know that the company's website is there. Sure, why not?!

Tell me, as a professional, how many of those names you know by heart? And even for the ones you know, when I say "Go to US News and read about ..." do you type in us.news or usnews.com?

It's about marketing. Also when I tell someone to go look at something I give them the link and if I do happen pass something along by speech I include the extension. There are a lot of different ones out there and I know to be specific if i want the person to find what I'm referring to.

Has anyone ever said to someone something as unspecific as go look at usa news? Nope we provide links or full site names with extensions or search instructions where we say type this in to google and about 3 down you will find this.

I don't know many site names by heart whether it be .com or anything else. Google remembers sites I visit often so I don't have to. Plus if i can't remember the url of somewhere specific I want to go, i just search it in Google where the results jog my memory.

 

[1NiteStand]

.com, .net, .org, ccTLDs, .info, .biz, .asia, .edu., .gov, .pro, .co, etc. = 1st & 2nd gen
.xyz, .club, .online, + hundreds others = 3rd/NEW gen

It's not about the address that makes your site memorable, but the content.. CONTENT IS KING.

1st gen domains will not be taken over by new gen ones.. they will co-exist.. well at least the successful new gen TLDs. There are plently of great new TLDs out now, and also plenty lame ones.

Remember not all .com website is a company... and .com means company... just like all .net websites are not networks.... its simply a tag to denote a location you access on the internet/via computers...

 

[Kate]

In Europe ccTLD's are much more popular than .com.
...
Basically it's not going to be a problem in places where people are already aware multiple extensions exist and are legit.

I can see good adoption in Europe and other places within 2 years. The USA will catch up over time.

My conclusions are slightly different
It's true that in Europe people are more aware about extensions other than .com.
The local extension is often preferred to .com, at least for companies with local/national scope.
But if people 'shun' .com, they will shun other extensions even more.

For example .paris doesn't seem to be getting a lot of traction.
I think the problem is that the geoTLDs are competing against ccTLDs, and that is the kiss of death.

Then you have the corpTLDs that are not available to the public anyway, and the generic extensions like .club or .cheese... these extensions are niche so they cannot appeal to anybody. These are not all-purpose TLDs.
There are just too many TLDs that lack relevance, while ccTLDs are very relevant.

Again, those who are saying: it will take off "within 2 years, 3 years"... are very optimistic.
New extensions have been around for more than a year already. If 3 years is your investment horizon, you will be disappointed.

 

[Wannabean]

My conclusions are slightly different
It's true that in Europe people are more aware about extensions other than .com.
The local extension is often preferred to .com, at least for companies with local/national scope.
But if people 'shun' .com, they will shun other extensions even more.

For example .paris doesn't seem to be getting a lot of traction.
I think the problem is that the geoTLDs are competing against ccTLDs, and that is the kiss of death.

Then you have the corpTLDs that are not available to the public anyway, and the generic extensions like .club or .cheese... these extensions are niche so they cannot appeal to anybody. These are not all-purpose TLDs.
There are just too many TLDs that lack relevance, while ccTLDs are very relevant.

Again, those who are saying: it will take off "within 2 years, 3 years"... are very optimistic.
New extensions have been around for more than a year already. If 3 years is your investment horizon, you will be disappointed.

Hi Kate I like a lot of what you've written here.

I agree there are a lot of extensions that lack relevance but I don't think people will shun .com. It's just the adoption of nGTLD's is likely to be accelerated, especially in Europe.

Within 2-3 more years I expect there to be a lot of companies using them in the EU and an increasing amount of US companies, though still relatively small as a portion of the whole.

What this may mean is an eventual depreciation of .com. The degree to which I think this will happen in a given country/continent, will be directly correlated to the uptake of nGTLD's in said place.

I'm of the opinion that .com as a whole is greatly overpriced in cases where there's no type in traffic, which I feel is the only thing that can justify current values. With less and less type in traffic and a whole generation who are used to navigation through google,buying a domain with a pre-existing customer base is not going to be possible. More inventory and less emphasis on type in traffic might depreciate .com a little but that could be countered or even eclipsed by overall growth in the internet space.

I think in 2-3 years there will be a decent aftermarket for nGTLD's but I don't expect them to ever reach current relative .com values, unless, again, the internet grows so much that all good keyword domains, regardless of extension, have a large number of willing end users.

It's basically the balance between new inventory and growth in user base that will dictate future values for everything.

If we're looking 20-30 years in to the future, I don't see what .com has going for it over any other extension. So over a long period of time the gap between nGTLD's and .com will decrease until they reach parity.

Of course google or some other clever clogs could do something tomorrow that renders domain names obsolete. So when we're making predictions of this nature, plenty of assumptions have been made.

 

[Winfluence]

You can't know for sure. Stick with premium keywords on related extensions, because those are the only nGTLD domains that are worth anything anyway....now and in the future.

 

[lazylady]

DotCom is the king! e.g., If someone owns LazyLady.club url and starts a business, he/she needs LazyLady.com as well to flourish.
End of the story.

 

[Landov]

After 10 years they will be very common. People needs time to adapt. Everyone must think ahead of time for investments.

 

[asset.domains]

why do you need general purpose tld ?

if you have a business in potatoes, owning freshpotatoes.com will not turn it to a general purpose tld, you can't sell trousers there, or new tablets or smartwatches, look at both sides of the dot

 

[vicky4712]

The arrival of new tlds has given a wide range of options to the consumers.Previously the startups had limited extensions to choose from like com,net,biz,mobi,org. and especially premium .com domains were in huge demand .People were ready to pay huge amounts to acquire their favorite .com domain not only for business but as an investment.But I'am afraid this might change with the popularity of ntlds soaring day by day.Now, people who want a premium domain of their choice for a new website can get it in other tlds at low costs or maybe even reg fee .This has had an adverse impact on the prices of .com domains in past couple of years.

 

[nvdomains]

Good luck for dreamers.

 

[pablohc86]

i think the real pain in the ass will be the brands tld because only licensed people can reg them.
When people will know that websites on brand tld are 100% trusted it can become hard for investors.
Luckily for us create a brand tld is not cheap, but things could change in the future. just my opinion

 

[Wannabean]

i think the real pain in the ass will be the brands tld because only licensed people can reg them.
When people will know that websites on brand tld are 100% trusted it can become hard for investors.
Luckily for us create a brand tld is not cheap, but things could change in the future. just my opinion

Would be a trademark issue anyway so no impact on investors.

 

[web.im]

Let's take TLDs as nations, if new TLDs manage to acquire a huge population of citizens, and if those citizens manage to build many great artifacts, they stand a chance of being popular.

My fear is that these new TLDs may become too many leading to extreme dilution. Some may go into extinction even before they have a chance of making an established showing.

 

[BrandChimp]

.app will bring attention to ngtlds as a lot of users will visit .app website (cloud applications?)

In the tech startup universe .XYZ will compete with .io and .Tech

.Link the perfect extension for companies to keep track of their online marketing efforts.

.web will be another great alternative to .com and ccTLDs

End users switching from .net to .web.

 

[Casey L]

I think names where there's a connection between the left and right of the dot (coffee.club, used.cars, etc) will have nice value, I don't see numerics or certain patterns holding value for much longer.