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...

Read More

 

[Fancy.domains]

1. No specials for .xyz renewals?
Never seen any. At least not yet. GoDaddy has $8.29 if you are in their "Domain Discount Club". Otherwise Namesilo is cheapest.

2. when did the registrations for general public open?
Beginning of June, 2014.

3. When did their $1-2 registrations start?
First, Network Solutions offered "free" ones to their customers with the equivalent .COM, but with regular renewal fees. Namecheap start to offer $1 registrations later on, also with regular renewal fees. I guess it is a little less than a year ago?!

 

[VRdommy]

No matter the fact of agreeing with Mr Mann or not...

I hope not many are buying bulk TLD names as a investment tool unless it is very unique.
I.E. wine.club

Because until such time we see many actual hosts a real site with prominence, it is nothing more that a novelty. A trinket in the dollar store.
I'm not saying some do not have value, just not many and most of those, not great.

Very few can be a investment instrument. No more than .ME or .TV has proven to be.
But that does not seem to stop the buying.

Names need a end user in need or want to have value. Where they coming from ?

Just my observations.

 

[Fancy.domains]

Names need a end user in need or want to have value. Where they coming from ?

What about all these chips? Most of them are bought and sold by speculating domainers, not end users. Same with numerical and LLL ngTLD chips (.TOP, .XYZ and .CLUB).

But apart from this, I get it. Without businesses buying the best generic combinations of keywords + TLDs, the demand for these names will remain low on the aftermarket.

 

[Domain Galleria]

No matter the fact of agreeing with Mr Mann or not...

I hope not many are buying bulk TLD names as a investment tool unless it is very unique.
I.E. wine.club

Because until such time we see many actual hosts a real site with prominence, it is nothing more that a novelty. A trinket in the dollar store.
I'm not saying some do not have value, just not many and most of those, not great.

Names need a end user in need or want to have value. Where they coming from ?

Just my observations.

You are right. I have both horrible and good ones but I think the good ones will pay for the bad ones when developed or sold. carleasing, rentmycar, excavator, excavators, grader, graders, caterers, tanker, tankers, conveyors, inverters, toaster, kettle and few others (all .online) which are good for product/service offerings. The other extension I bought into was the new .Cloud and I made sure all the LLL I bought contained ''IT'' so as to target people in IT industry. Also included were XINXI and sousou meaning information and search respectively (Chinese market's target).

I dont really like ngtlds except .online which has great potentials for e-commerce but I believe few of them would grow over time.

 

[coolool]

New gTLDs are babies. Do you teach 1~2 years old baby to run?

 

[Kate]

New gTLDs are babies. Do you teach 1~2 years old baby to run?

Good point. Yet I am not saying you just have to be patient, because I think they are not going to appreciate a lot over time. However, domainers are often impatient, they want to flip within the first year and not keep the names for ten years.

There is not enough consumer awareness right now, and believe me it will take time... more than most people imagine.
There has to be a primary market before a secondary market can take shape. But since the supply is so huge vs the limited demand, it doesn't make sense to stock up heavily on gTLDs when end users have so much choice and they can very easily bypass the domainer.
The only thing you can do is try to identify the possible future winners, because some extensions will be more popular than others. Example: .club, maybe .online - I don't know.
But in order to make a sale in a new extension you have to own a name that is a bit special. Very few will be aftermarket-worthy.

It's true, a few big sales took place.
Who makes them ? The registry, almost always.
The sales are not representative and essentially amount to a mirage.
The best way to invest in new extensions may very well be to be a shareholder in a registry. Be at the top of the food chain.

#foolsgold

 

[Domain Wildcatter]

I am seeing way too many people that are constantly plugged into the Machine having problems with memory recall and inattentiveness. Probably due to information overload, from their non-stop barrage of Tweets, FB posts, and endless scrolling webpages. People are losing their ability to breath naturally in a vacuum of IO. This is why I think .coms will continue to be King. With .com, people don't have to sacrifice their already vexed brain power to remember another new dictionary word that is right of the dot. K.I.S.S. Keep it .Com.

 

[Domain Wildcatter]

Another interesting thing to consider about .coms. The characters roll softly with curves and are visually appealing. It is a very smooth reading experience.

With .xyz, I feel like I am stuck in a patch of thorns, due to the pointy ends of these three characters. Kind of hard to get past them visually without coming out a bit scraped up and bloody...

 

[brindle123]

It's pretty sad when the registry gets rid of the co-founder! A company that isn't that old is having problems already. That doesn't build any confidence with the domain community or public in general.

I would be very leery of making any purchase from them. I think this is just the beginning of problems we will start seeing with all these fly by night registries.

 

[brindle123]

Another interesting thing to consider about .coms. The characters roll softly with curves and are visually appealing. It is a very smooth reading experience.

With .xyz, I feel like I am stuck in a patch of thorns, due to the pointy ends of these three characters. Kind of hard to get past them visually without coming out a bit scraped up and bloody...

I agree. I always thought .xyz just looks ugly and I just don't get the appeal beside them being sold for $1

What keywords work at all with .xyz? There are none! Maybe abc.xyz but other than that, it's a useless extension that will fall to the bottom of the pit of new tlds.

 

[RaiderGirl]

It's great that a growing number of domainers favor Gld's, its even better that they are reselling them to other resellers who later resell them to other resellers, In this respect, I would agree that Gtld's do have a future within our industry, outside our industry, end users (if their aware of Gtlds) are not going pay top dollar for them, especially for ones with so many alternative keywords;

.photo
.photos
.photography
.pic
.pictures
.graphics

Confusion?

What are you talking about?

 

[brindle123]

.photo
.photos
.photography
.pic
.pictures
.graphics

Confusion?

What are you talking about?

That is confusing to have the same theme with many different keywords for an extension! What is the point of having .pic and .pictures? Besides selling them to domainers! Plus end users don't understand the point.

RaiderGirl:
You think it is great that gtlds are bought and sold only in the domain industry, then resold only within our industry? How the hell does that help anything? It doesn't help us get end user sales, which is where the real money is. It doesn't help the end user either, buy having a domain change hands 10 times before they come across it.

I hope your post was just being sarcastic and you are not confused. It read as being sarcastic but some people don't get the problem we are dealing with.

There are so many on here that got suckered into the "gTLD's are great!" scam/marketing.

Why would an end user buy .pic from me then have to try to buy .picture from someone else, then have to buy .photos from another domainer or the registry?

.anywho

 

[forge]

Confusion?

What are you talking about?

 

[Chris Rice]

It's great that a growing number of domainers favor Gld's, its even better that they are reselling them to other resellers who later resell them to other resellers, In this respect, I would agree that Gtld's do have a future within our industry, outside our industry, end users (if their aware of Gtlds) are not going pay top dollar for them, especially for ones with so many alternative keywords;

.photo
.photos
.photography
.pic
.pictures
.graphics

Confusion?

What are you talking about?

I'm confused lol

 

[doubleU]

New gTLDs are here out of necessity, it's the inevitable future which always bites someones backside.

We can whinge all day or we can embrace the future with our arms open to the best solution that man could find and implement.

I never heard anyone offer a better solution to the new gTLDs, if you have please tell us if not I think we should put it to bed.

 

[cmdomains]

Another interesting thing to consider about .coms. The characters roll softly with curves and are visually appealing. It is a very smooth reading experience.

With .xyz, I feel like I am stuck in a patch of thorns, due to the pointy ends of these three characters. Kind of hard to get past them visually without coming out a bit scraped up and bloody...

Very much what I had in mind.

Maybe why Chinese like xyz is cause of the somewhat empiric culture they've built. And these letters are sharp much like empires. Not to say no Chinese Dynasty was soft, sensitive, zen....

 

[Kate]

I never heard anyone offer a better solution to the new gTLDs, if you have please tell us if not I think we should put it to bed.

Obviously. New extensions = a solution looking for a problem. We already have too many extensions. Do you think a crash and bankrupties are going to help ?
Who is going to absorb the supply ? Not my problem.

 

[Recons.Com]

It is fortunate for domain investors that .com was so dominant by time of launch of ngtlds...

If net, biz, info etc. were close to com, there would have been no clear benchmark and guidance and buyers would never pay small fee above the reg for any name.

It would also become very costly for TM protection, as a mid size company would have to pay for all tlds in existence (and quite a few were doing this few years ago). Then they realized it is enough to own .com and don't even bother about even .net and arrival of hundreds of new ones further strengthened the point.

But strong .com also helps even ngtlds as, when they offer kw.ngtld and buyer checks for how much .com sold, he thinks "yeah, 1% of that amount is probably cheap".

 

[brindle123]

New gTLDs are here out of necessity, it's the inevitable future which always bites someones backside.

Why is it a necessity to have .biz and .business? Same with .pic and .pictures and so on and on and on!

It's only to get money from us!

 

[RaiderGirl]

I hope your post was just being sarcastic and you are not confused. It read as being sarcastic but some people don't get the problem we are dealing with.

Of course it was sarcasm.. It's goes to the point that the main market for Gtld's is domainers, NOT end users.. Domainers keep the Gtld machine going until a light bulb goes off and they realize these extensions aren't worth a crap, and then you see a snowball effect of domainers unloading them for anything they can get. We aren't there quite yet, but were going to be!

 

[Kate]

<Purge initiated>

From: Gustavo Lozano <**********@icann.org>
To: "gtldnotification*************@icann.org" <gtldnotification************@icann.org>
This message is to let you know that the registry agreement for .doosan is
being terminated and the gTLD .doosan has been removed from the root zone
today.

TLD: doosan
Date of retirement from the root zone: 2016-02-24

The https://newgtlds.icann.org/newgtlds.csv report is not showing the TLD
anymore.

Regards,

Gustavo Lozano
Technical Services Sr. Manager
Domain Name Services and Industry Engagement
Global Domains Division
ICANN

 

[Domain Galleria]

<Purge initiated>

From: Gustavo Lozano <**********@icann.org>
To: "gtldnotification*************@icann.org" <gtldnotification************@icann.org>
This message is to let you know that the registry agreement for .doosan is
being terminated and the gTLD .doosan has been removed from the root zone
today.

TLD: doosan
Date of retirement from the root zone: 2016-02-24

The https://newgtlds.icann.org/newgtlds.csv report is not showing the TLD
anymore.

Regards,

Gustavo Lozano
Technical Services Sr. Manager
Domain Name Services and Industry Engagement
Global Domains Division
ICANN

Dollars go into pipe, possibility of heart attacks

 

[dordomai]

Very much what I had in mind.

Maybe why Chinese like xyz is cause of the somewhat empiric culture they've built. And these letters are sharp much like empires. Not to say no Chinese Dynasty was soft, sensitive, zen....

what the Chinese like about xyz is that it costs $1 and you can buy up tens of thousands and hope to resell them for $10 before the house of cards crashes.

I wrote before why a domainer should not want the ngtlds to succeed.

Look how .xyz is priced now on premium names.

https://www.dynadot.com/domain/search.html?domain=markets.xyz&search=Search

markets.xyz Available Registry Premium Domain $3000.00

This will happen to all domains that have value sooner or later. In theory they could even up the renewal fees WHILE you hold the domain.

Do you think you can domain with a system like this?

The real owner of the domain is the registry not you.

Do you think you can chase drops anymore? Backorder starts at $3000 (that's per year)

Do you think you can hold a domain like this to wait for a perfect buyer?

If the ngtlds were to replace .com - won't happen - then we would have only 4 domainers left:

Donuts, Rightside, Minds and Machines and Uniregistry.

 

[Recons.Com]

Yeah, got yet another email from namecheap today that I can reg all that crap for 0.88$ par name, including xyz, tech, press, site, website (why there is no .mywebsite?), pw, space...

Notice how they price it to make it look "lucky" for Chinese? Those would probably buy at 0.88$ plain air, but at 0.44$ their fingers would probably be shaking, if we believe what they have been making us believe lately for buyouts...

 

[brindle123]

<Purge initiated>

From: Gustavo Lozano <**********@icann.org>
To: "gtldnotification*************@icann.org" <gtldnotification************@icann.org>
[B]This message is to let you know that the registry agreement for .doosan is
being terminated and the gTLD .doosan has been removed from the root zone
today.[/B]

TLD: doosan
Date of retirement from the root zone: 2016-02-24

The https://newgtlds.icann.org/newgtlds.csv report is not showing the TLD
anymore.

Regards,

Gustavo Lozano
Technical Services Sr. Manager
Domain Name Services and Industry Engagement
Global Domains Division
ICANN

SCARY that ICANN can let this happen. It doesn't really surprise me though. ICANN does nothing to protect us and let's the registries open up, make money, and then crash and burn.
This will happen more and more.

I can't really blame the registries because they are in the business of making money. ICANN should over-see this stuff with the blinders off for a change.

Ficann!