new gtlds Mike Mann Thinks New gTLDs Will Confuse Consumers

[News]

The new gTLD domains can sound very good and their industry can grow a bit for a while, but in the long run the sites launched with these extensions will confuse consumers and make the site owners look like scammers or weak unintelligent companies that cant afford a .com.

Here is an objective metric for you, all the Fortune 500 companies with the worlds best marketing people use .Com and still will a year from now and the year following...

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[frank-germany]

what about https://ABC.xyz ?

thats just a "Larry" page....

 

[DANEYAL]

This is definitely going to happen for at least next 10 years, corporate heads in different sectors operating worldwide don't even know about .xyz .top etc kind of things. What they know and recognize is dot com, their email IDs at some dot com domain is what they will always prefer.

However .xyz is reasonable for personal profiles & projects point of view & people are making use of it. Business brands & Corporate entities will generally keep preferring .com as their first choice without any confusion.

 

[Domain Galleria]

I was trying to re-brand one of my small businesses and when I asked my graphics artist which of the extensions i should pick, the guy simply said .Online. It is true that many extensions would not be able to stand the test of time but as it is, .com doesnt have enough rooms to accommodate everyone. Let's look at it from this angle. Assuming my company's name is Data Tech and I check for name availability but discover name is already registered by anther company, what will come to my mind is to go for its accronym which is dt - a name already taken by another company. At this point, what am I supposed to do - to spell my company name backward or what? I certainly will not in the name of trying to share same extension with fortune 500 companies come up with any weird name.

We may come up with the idea of approaching current owners but who says you are bigger than current owners of those names. Dot com owners and some domainers may be having problems with the new extensions but not business owners as they would rather maintain their identity via ngtld than getting choked up in .com dynasty

 

[Domain Galleria]

thats just a "Larry" page....

You are right. I am sure they won't maintain that page for a long time. Maybe they are a bit confused about what to do with that name.

 

[Keith]

Do we need to ask what extension?

.xyz

Now don't tell anyone else. I'm quietly loading up on these

 

[nomen]

The idea that the Internet moves forward .COM remaining the only serious TLD is just non-sense, borderline naive IMO. I'm not suprised at all that the new TLDs haven't took off yet, didn't expect anything else, but within time it's pretty much impossible for them to not to be adopted. Again, IMO.

 

[VirtualT]

The real issue here is time frame. It's naive to assume that new gtld won't be adopted by the general public at some point in the future, but could be 10-15 years away..

Disclosure - I own no new gtld domains

 

[Jasonn]

i think 99% of new gtlds registered are garbage and voiced that opinion a long time ago. i think continuing to talk about it over and over again just gives them attention they don't deserve.

 

[bytedo]

That a few people would register a few of the ntlds is not the issue here imho. What we don't all seem to agree on is will these extensions take the place of .com. I don't have a crystal ball the prognosis for these extensions would suggest that would never happen.

 

[dordomai]

That a few people would register a few of the ntlds is not the issue here imho. What we don't all seem to agree on is will these extensions take the place of .com. I don't have a crystal ball the prognosis for these extensions would suggest that would never happen.

even if it were to happen it would take a loong time.

.com is all about being a brand everyone knows.

Now some claim that today's kids grow up with the ngtlds and thus will prefer them over .com

This is not true at least not now.

What a six year old learns today that most of his websites are under .com and this is not going to change within the next 10 years. 10 years from now the 6 year old will be 16 and grew up using .com based websites.

To become the consumer group with the greatest buying power in the marketplace it will be another 30 years on average.

If we are optimistic someone born today might grew up with ngtlds as a popular extension but it will be another 45 years for this consumer group to lead the market. The truth is most millenials grew up with .com not with ngtlds. Someone born in 2000 grew up with .com

Even if the ngtlds were to become successful they would unlikely end .com as it would be hard to undo the branding that has happened.

 

[Recons.Com]

I was trying to re-brand one of my small businesses and when I asked my graphics artist which of the extensions i should pick, the guy simply said .Online. It is true that many extensions would not be able to stand the test of time but as it is, .com doesnt have enough rooms to accommodate everyone. Let's look at it from this angle. Assuming my company's name is Data Tech and I check for name availability but discover name is already registered by anther company, what will come to my mind is to go for its accronym which is dt - a name already taken by another company. At this point, what am I supposed to do - to spell my company name backward or what? I certainly will not in the name of trying to share same extension with fortune 500 companies come up with any weird name.

We may come up with the idea of approaching current owners but who says you are bigger than current owners of those names. Dot com owners and some domainers may be having problems with the new extensions but not business owners as they would rather maintain their identity via ngtld than getting choked up in .com dynasty

You need to rebrand and, before you do, make sure you have .com of your new brand and/or cctld if your operations are country specific.

 

[tomcarl]

The whole 'future generations wanting gTLDs' thing is oversold. My 12 year old cousin wanted a domain to forward to her instagram page, I asked her which domain she wanted, and while I was in the middle of letting her know there was dot pics, dot photos, etc she instinctively said "Dot Com!" in the middle of me talking. They'll follow whatever is trending is on TV, social media, etc.

 

[DOMAIN ILLUMINATI]

I were asking my little niece ''Which one sounds better: '.top' or '.com'?''
Whitout knowing what is a TLD she aswered: '''.top'!''
True story.

 

[Domain Galleria]

The whole 'future generations wanting gTLDs' thing is oversold. My 12 year old cousin wanted a domain to forward to her instagram page, I asked her which domain she wanted, and while I was in the middle of letting her know there was dot pics, dot photos, etc she instinctively said "Dot Com!" in the middle of me talking. They'll follow whatever is trending is on TV, social media, etc.

If you agree that children follow trend and also belied trend is never static, would you say a modified business model is not enough for launch few ngtld into prominence?

 

[.NJ]

The new Gtlds were created for one reason, and one reason only....

To fill the pockets of a select few, from draining the pockets of domainers.

End users have no idea what a gtld is, and will most likely never know.

95% of all new gtld registrations are by domainers and will remain in the vicious circle till they just eventually disappear off the radar.

History always repeats itself....

 

[tomcarl]

I think everything has it's place and gTLDs will continue to grow slowly and have their place. I can think of a lot of casual uses for them. If I was a Teen I'd admit I'd probably register tomcarl.sexy and forward it to pics of me flexing but that doesn't mean I'd put a business or serious project on it, now or 20 years from now, especially 20 years from now if there are dozens of dot-this, dot-thats floating around. As Mike Mann said, I'd want my consumer to remember me without having to remember what's right of the dot and I wouldn't want to build a 2-word brand on a dot-whatever while the dot com is owned by someone else. 20 years from now dot com will still be around and still be as prestigious as it is today regardless how many other extensions are used, you can't take away over 20 years of branding from it just because more options are available. Coca-cola and Pepsi still sells more units than the cheaper RC Colas. I think it will evolve to what it was originally intended to be used for = Commercial / Commerce, and movies will be on .movie, and apps with be on dot app, tv shows will be on .tv, and other casual blogs/fly-by-night businesses will be on dot .whatevers as they have been for the last 10 years with .biz

 

[NetworkPearl]

I agree

 

[000]

Lol, so much wishful thinking here. The adoption of new gtld's is literally occurring in front of our eyes, right now - today. If you're in denial, odds are you're a dinosaur, heavily invested in .com, adverse to change, or incredibly closed-minded.

Will .com remain the single most valuable extension overall, for decades to come? If you ask me, sure. But the demand for, and necessity of owning ".com" will be gradually diminished by the new gtld's. Unless you have truly incredible .com's, they're generally only going to get harder to sell from here on out, and of course that's got a lot of domainers biting their nails.

I know many of ya'll will dismiss my post as nonsense, but it might be wise to consider the opinion of a 20-something youngin' who's been buying and selling .COM's for nearly half his life. I am a .COM guy. But I'm also a realist, and the writing's on the wall, folks.

 

[tomcarl]

I remember a few years ago when I used to buy and sell vintage games on eBay and in a forum there were big debates about how the new roms, emulators and clone systems were going to absolutely kill the value of our inventory. A few years later the clones sell well while the originals nearly doubled in price.

You can't say that in even 10 years from now if you were starting a well-funded business called SweetSnacks and you were using SweetSnacks.web and you seen that SweetSnacks.com was a few search results up or down from you in the search engines that you wouldn't believe it was going to have zero impact on your business or its image or that there was 100% equality there or not being bugged by seeing it.

That's real IMO.

 

[000]

If a company has millions of dollars at their disposal, sure, maybe they'll shell out the big bucks for the .com.

But I'm of the opinion that individuals and small to medium-sized businesses will most definitely increasingly choose alternatives to .com.... starting yesterday. Yes, .com will "always" be "nice to have", but more and more "unnecessary" as gtld awareness grows - and that won't take 10-20 years.

 

[Manik]

Ngtlds are here to replace third level domains not second level domains like dot coms or nets. Although, I wouldn't take advice from someone who owns like thousands of .coms in his portfolio. That's like asking the owner of Marlboros whether vaping is a better option than smoking. Even if it were, he wouldn't agree with it.

 

[Chris Rice]

He should have sold his portfolio to GoDaddy like TheDomains did. Maybe his profit margin is top small?

 

[dordomai]

Lol, so much wishful thinking here. The adoption of new gtld's is literally occurring in front of our eyes, right now - today. If you're in denial, odds are you're a dinosaur, heavily invested in .com, adverse to change, or incredibly closed-minded.

Will .com remain the single most valuable extension overall, for decades to come? If you ask me, sure. But the demand for, and necessity of owning ".com" will be gradually diminished by the new gtld's. Unless you have truly incredible .com's, they're generally only going to get harder to sell from here on out, and of course that's got a lot of domainers biting their nails.

I know many of ya'll will dismiss my post as nonsense, but it might be wise to consider the opinion of a 20-something youngin' who's been buying and selling .COM's for nearly half his life. I am a .COM guy. But I'm also a realist, and the writing's on the wall, folks.

I think the opposite will be true. Only the best ngtlds will get attention, the others will be irrelevant. There aren't that many great ngtlds and for each that exists there is an at least equally good .com. That's why there will always (or at least for a loong time) more good .com than ngtlds.

I think domainers should not want ngtlds to succeed. The system is setup in a way that lets the registry act as a domainer without the need for a middleman.

Under the ngtlds domainers are mostly obsolete, dinosaurs if you want.

 

[Domain Galleria]

I am wondering if business owners are the ones complaining that their sites are not coming up whenever they use ngtld or it just domain speculators who are jittery about effects of ngtld on their premium names . One of my simple sites without much content ruzu.online is on the first page on google anytime I type RUZU ONLINE. As at this morning I was ranking no 1 but changed few minutes ago. Currently, I occupy 4,5,6,7,8,9 and 10 on the first page. That tells me if I have good content with constant update on my on a site like excavators.online, I might as well come up on the first page if anyone is searching for excavators. If I am running an online casino, why won't I snap casino.online when I know casino.online is beyond my reach? I agree that domainers need to be cautious when it comes to choosing which extension to invest in but it's pure misinformation to say businesses not using .com will not get needed acceptability.

 

[dordomai]

If I am running an online casino, why won't I snap casino.online when I know casino.online is beyond my reach? I agree that domainers need to be cautious when it comes to choosing which extension to invest in but it's pure misinformation to say businesses not using .com will not get needed acceptability.

This is not an new scenario and been around since the dawn of the internet. There was always an alternative .net, .org then .ws,.cc, .info etc. and some business who couldn't get the .com got an alternative extension.

Despite that they still would haven gotten the .com if they could have.

I believe that over time exact match advantage in the search engines will decrease and domains will be mostly brands that are being bought and sold.