Pros & Cons of .com vs. New GTLDs

[Cool.Ventures]

With all the new GTLDs rolling out, I'd like to list the pros & cons:

Pros of .com:

• Ingrained in the minds for now
• Inexpensive

Cons of .com:

• "com" isn't a valid word and is not descriptive, thus defeating the purpose of not using IP numbers.
• Everything "good" is taken or squatted

Pros of new GTLDs:

• Descriptive & catchy
• Can get what you want or close to it

Cons of new GTLDs:

• Risk initially of losing visitors to the .com version
• More expensive renewals so far
• At the mercy of Donuts, etc. whatever they want to do

 

[JB Lions]

Brandables like many of those bike names are gold and will remain in the .com space.

Keywords are moving to gtld's and company names or brands that work.

I think a big chunk of .com reg's will be gone in a couple years.

They're not moving, they're available. And company names and brands working on these extensions? Probably not.

And you talk about keywords and gtlds but what have we seen so far? We know most of the great keywords are gone very quickly. So what do we have left? What you see getting posted in this forum.

trademarks like the Eco.gallery guy with his Second Life regs. Funny hearing him talk about squatting, while squatting himself

we have people like yourself putting . in the middle of words where they don't belong saying they're great names

we have people picking poodle.blog over poodle.com

we have people regging names that are available in .com for reg fee

we have people putting words in the wrong order. If someone posted they just got shoesrunning.com, they would probably be made fun of because it's runningshoes.com that makes sense. But with these, there is no shortage of that happening

Basically we have a bunch of craziness.

 

[McDuke]

I agree that the registries should have been on this sooner in their advertising campaigns, but it is never too late to start, given that there are at least hundreds of new gTLDs to be released.

I think this is going to be the difference!

One of the old faithful rules of advertizing is repetition, with all these extensions rolling out at once it is going to be in everyone's faces. So this is going to help the marketing.

But what sucks is the whole point of these extension was to give the public options and as JB said domainers will be gobbling up many keywords early. "even though there are a few left still "

So i think the new gtld guys failed here, they should have made the public more aware so Joe Blow could have gone and registered stamp.collecting when it was available.

I think i first heard about .xxx on a Superbowl commercial. This was when i didn't even know what godaddy was. Was there a commercial this year for the new extensions? We don't get all the commercials in canada so I'm not sure.

You are right though, it is not too late to advertize!

---------- Post added at 12:57 PM ---------- Previous post was at 12:50 PM ----------

They're not moving, they're available. And company names and brands working on these extensions? Probably not.

And you talk about keywords and gtlds but what have we seen so far? We know most of the great keywords are gone very quickly. So what do we have left? What you see getting posted in this forum.

trademarks like the Eco.gallery guy with his Second Life regs. Funny hearing him talk about squatting, while squatting himself

we have people like yourself putting . in the middle of words where they don't belong saying they're great names

we have people picking poodle.blog over poodle.com

we have people regging names that are available in .com for reg fee

we have people putting words in the wrong order. If someone posted they just got shoesrunning.com, they would probably be made fun of because it's runningshoes.com that makes sense. But with these, there is no shortage of that happening

Basically we have a bunch of craziness.

I get what you're throwing down.

I do see the potential issues but i also see a place for these new extensions. I am new to domaining so maybe I'm overly excited because i never thought in my life i would have a 4 letter dictionary word left of the dot. I think people will think they are fun, new, trendy, hip or whatever you want to call it.

Don't forget about technological advances, all it will take is a new google search tool and presto the new gtld's could be overnight sensations.

 

[Ms Domainer]

You just made a post for .com. Company names are usually original, so they're usually available in .com. We've done examples with this already in other threads. You can take something like bikes - https://www.google.com/search?q=bik...la:en-US:official&client=firefox-a&channel=sb

And see original names or keyword bike with another word all day long.

So see what I bolded from you in the quote. If they can do what you said, and they can, why even mess with these second rate extensions?

*

Even if an end user bicycle shop has MyCompany.com or even MyCompanyBike.com, he/she might find MyCompany.bike quite appealing.

It will be up to the registries to convince end users of this, not the deep pockets domainer community, who will, going forward, snag the few sensible generics in each gTLDs. No one in their right mind would register MiloMinderbender.bike, unless the registrant is named Milo Minderbender who owns a bike or bike shop.

Nothing is certain -- except that .com will chug along nicely. And, no doubt, investment in the new gTLDs involves a risk.

Found an article about how make a new thing go viral:

http://webtrends.about.com/od/howtoguides/tp/How-to-Go-Viral-Tips-For-Going-Viral.htm​

Very interesting...

If the new registries are smart, they will do what they need to do to make this happen.

I admit that the jury is still out on that.

If this first phase succeeds, you may see that ordinary users will eventually be able to reg their own right-of-the-dot gTLDs, much in the way you register a domain name now -- that would be MANY years from now.

Can you imagine: My.CrapName6g6709

:lol:


*

 

[forge]

So i think the new gtld guys failed here, they should have made the public more aware so Joe Blow could have gone and registered stamp.collecting when it was available.

My nomination for Comment of the Year.

IMHO it was a major failure on the part of Donuts et al. Maybe they are counting on a slowly-building momentum for their new namespace. I believe public awareness at this stage is almost non-existent. I'll go one step further to say that even with all their hoopla and posturing, "the new gtld guys" never cared one iota about "Joe Blow" but only about their own bottom line.

The arguments on this subject can continue till everyone's blue in the face. It's kind of pointless in my mind.

 

[urlurl]

You also have to keep in mind 95% of these new extensions are being cherry-picked by domainers and existing co's protecting their brand (because the general public has no idea they even exist)

it will take a very looooog time before they are adopted and used by the average Joe.

Try doing this as an experiment. Go ask a person (who is not in the domain/internet industry) to name as many extensions as they can. most will say com net, org and a country code.

i'm sorry to say you wont find a huge corp changing or using a new extension... and until they do I don't see and large adoption to use these new extensions by other people.

So who will use the new extensions?:

Bloggers, vloggers, etc
mini personal site
small micro niche business (Johns.Photography)
Traffic seekers - Parking sites
Scammers

 

[BrandChimp]

.words vs .extensions....

.Tech (extension) .Technology (word)
.ws (extension) .Websites (word)

Extensions Kick their ass

 

[urlurl]

I just noticed another issue... new niche extensions that are too similar

. Photo
. Photos
. Photography
. Pics
. Pictures

I guess you need to buy all 5, lol

 

[McDuke]

I just noticed another issue... new niche extensions that are too similar

. Photo
. Photos
. Photography
. Pics
. Pictures

I guess you need to buy all 5, lol

I looked at those too and i didn't touch one because of this. These are for the public not the resell market.

 

[Kate]

One of the old faithful rules of advertizing is repetition, with all these extensions rolling out at once it is going to be in everyone's faces. So this is going to help the marketing.

Repetition is not enough, there has to be a core group of end users leading by example, and raising the profile of the TLD. That means advertising their URLs too. You can advertise crap, but that doesn't mean people will buy it. Good luck promoting 'Popsa' when everybody drinks Cola (or Pepsi).

I'm not moving to the ghetto as long as my competitors and clients are on Main Street.
Boeing, Airbus and the like use .com, they don't use .aero.
Manpower.jobs does not resolve etc.
Those industry-specific extensions have no credibility because they are not backed by the industry players. There is no real incentive for using them.
So the question is where the traction coming from ?

But what sucks is the whole point of these extension was to give the public options and as JB said domainers will be gobbling up many keywords early. "even though there are a few left still "

Yes but we knew that was to be expected. The whole TLD game is not about giving the little guy more choice of keywords. It's more about milking money from domainers, TM holders and fashion victims.

Don't forget about technological advances, all it will take is a new google search tool and presto the new gtld's could be overnight sensations.

Google have said clearly they do not favor certain extensions, and even if they did, the value of domain names is not determined by the search engines. The driving force will be development as always.

 

[McDuke]

Repetition is not enough, there has to be a core group of end users leading by example

These new extensions will take a generation to develop. If big companies do move it won't be for a while.

I'm not moving to the ghetto as long as my competitors and clients are on Main Street.

I'm not sold these new extensions are the ghetto but rather the suburbs with fancy strip malls.

I look at .net, .info, .org as the ghetto, I'm not sure why.

 

[Kate]

Keep in mind that .com and ccTLDs continue to grow at a brisk pace and outpace the new extensions - they are not catching up ever. What it would take is a massive shift, like tens of millions of end users ditching their .com.

If you ask the layman about TLDs, they all know about .com, their ccTLD, a few others perhaps, but they are not familiar with the rest. And frankly they are probably not very much interested. Were they consulted by the registries ?

The resistance to change does not come from domainers. Because they are always the first to buy the garbage handed out to them

 

[DnEbook]

things like .sony and .canon will contribute to the changing landscape, big dollars in their advertising budgets and interesting to see how they use their extensions?

 

[ImageAuthors]

I look at .net, .info, .org as the ghetto, I'm not sure why.

I'm not sure why either.

.ORG is favored by many nonprofit and social-cause websites. Look at Wikipedia.org.

.NET is favored by many tech websites.
Look at PHP.net.

.INFO has been seeing a resurgence in sales.
It would certainly be as good as .TIPS or .GURU if it were released today. Better, in fact, than .GURU because it's multilingual and more serious-sounding.

Each of these 3 TLDs has vastly more registrations than any of the new wave of vanity extensions we've seen so far. And that will remain true for the next DECADE.

These 3 continue to outsell any of the new extensions also.

 

[Cool.Ventures]

Yeah, I see .tips is the fastest growing new release other than the slightly "older" guru. I'm glad I put most my money in premium .tips vs. the other new ones, perhaps too much, only time will tell (life.tips and helpful.tips). The premium .tips renewal fees are a bit frightening to me... I hope I can transfer to a cheaper registrar. There are some renewal fees way out there even much higher than my premium ones.

 

[jmcc]

I think a big chunk of .com reg's will be gone in a couple years, but it will still be king.

What a lot of people do not see is that over a million .COM domains are deleted each month and millions more are registered. Most people think of the large gTLDs as being monolithic and unchanging but they are not. That pattern of new registrations and deletions has been happening for years whereas these new gTLDs are unproven. the other aspect is that much of the natural speculation in the new gTLDs has been dampened by the registries holding back the premium domain names for themselves or for auction.

Regards...jmcc

---------- Post added at 05:21 AM ---------- Previous post was at 05:16 AM ----------

.ORG is favored by many nonprofit and social-cause websites. Look at Wikipedia.org.

The .ORG registry claims about usage percentages of .ORG domain names are not reliable.

.NET is favored by many tech websites.
Look at PHP.net.

A lot of them are old domain names and long established sites.

.INFO has been seeing a resurgence in sales.

The .INFO gTLD has had a massive fall in the last few years from over 7M to about 5.5M domains. It has always had a cyclic boom and bust pattern due to the low registrations fees and special offers.

These 3 continue to outsell any of the new extensions also.

The city gTLDs and regional gTLDs are the ones to watch. The lacklustre promotion of .US ccTLD (and dominance of .COM in the US market) has created and opportunity for the US city gTLDs to take registrations that should really have been concentrated in .US ccTLD.

Regards...jmcc

---------- Post added at 05:28 AM ---------- Previous post was at 05:21 AM ----------

Yeah, I see .tips is the fastest growing new release other than the slightly "older" guru.

Don't confuse Sunrise (where trademark owners register their domains) and Landrush activity (where many speculative registrations appear) with sustained growth. Normally the Landrush period in a new gTLD lasts for approximately six months and then a growth/new registration pattern that is more typical for the TLD emerges.

Regards...jmcc

 

[ecalc]

new gtld = hope and change
dot com = straight cash

http://youtu.be/tmJcUlrkMNg

My role is to take the ball deep
take the top off the defense
I don’t shine shoes
I don’t tape ankles
I don’t cut checks
Straight cash homie

R Moss

 

[DnEbook]

i nearly got it right …..ummm

https://www.namepros.com/domain-name-discussion/410767-alpha-dot-weekly.html

 

[B&J]

Cannot agree with these:

Cons of .com:

• Everything "good" is taken or squatted

Pros of new GTLDs:

• Can get what you want or close to it

Lots of good names are taken, few are squatted (those you can pursue if you have a trademark), more can be bought on the secondary market for a decent prices as they are falling.

Many really good names in new extensions are either taken or reserved, and are not cheaper than all good TLDs.

I guess it makes them more or less equal long run.

 

[ImageAuthors]

The .ORG registry claims about usage percentages of .ORG domain names are not reliable.[/SIZE]

Even without reference to registry-published statistics, we all run across .ORG websites pretty much daily. They're everywhere. And they tend to choose .ORG deliberately. So do I as an end user.

A lot of them are old domain names and long established sites.

Yes, but a lot of the .NET sites are quite new. The other day, I gathered a list of advertisers for a particular server niche. That was in connection with one of my domain auctions. About 1 out of 3 had branded itself on .NET instead of .COM. And I personally know programmers who favor .NET ahead of .COM for their tech-related sites.

Pound for pound for my own profile, .NET outsells .COM, actually. Not necessarily the highest sales, but the highest profitability for me ... apart from one other extension which shall remain nameless.

 

[McDuke]

These 3 continue to outsell any of the new extensions also.

Yeah, they probably will out sell them, I'm not sure why I look at it like this. I had an employer once who did millions through his company and he was too cheap to pay 2k for the .com or get his site working properly and used a .net. Maybe he had a bad experience with a domainer I'm not sure what the issue was but, I though wow I cant believe he was using a .net. This was before I started domaining and was a layman when it came to domain extensions.

I'm curious now, I wonder if a poll was presented to the general public "which domain extension they though was ghetto" what the tally would be.