domains Status Quo Bias Favors .com Top Level Domain, But For How Long?

[Page Howe]

RB's take on .com and new top level domains published in Law Technology Today

Status Quo Bias Favors .com Top Level Domain, But For How Long?

https://www.lawtechnologytoday.org/...favors-com-top-level-domain-but-for-how-long/

 

[Bob Hawkes]

Thanks for providing the data in this thread @JB Lions. You make a good point about new gTLDs re the country codes in the analysis @James Iles did back in January and published on NPs. I was also surprised by just 2% .org as well as it seems lots of crowd funded startups and crypto are operating on .org. It will also be interesting to see if .dev and .app push the numbers when an analysis is done in another year - I predict yes.

Right now the main buyer brokers and brandable marketplaces are largely ignoring the non .com options, so not surprising 3/4 of startups are choosing .com. I think there is room for a new player serving that niche.

Bob

 

[BrandableDomain]

My favourite example of a new gTLD domain in discussions like this is Amazon.jobs. Simply because with more than half a million employees, and with jobs at the company so highly sought after, the site must be getting millions of visitors. All this traffic drives acceptance.

The domain: AmazonJobs.com does not even resolve. My theory is that Jeff Bezos believes that if somebody is too dumb to find their site, then he does not want them to work at Amazon. So he is likely deliberately not using the dot com.

Blake Janover from Home.loans expresses some visionary thinking in the referenced LawTechnologyToday article:

“Subjectively I think it [a new gTLD] speaks to an innovative individual or company that is embracing change and it’s a good foundation for scaling an organization based on those principals…”

“I believe the masses are still behind ‘.com’s which probably means it’s a good time to be looking at alternatives as paradigm shifts favor the early adapters.”

This seems to resonate with what Amazon says on their job site though they aren't talking about domains:

“We're a company of pioneers. It's our job to make bold bets, and we get our energy from inventing on behalf of customers. Success is measured against the possible, not the probable.”

Amazon.Jobs

https://www.amazon.jobs

 

[BrandableDomain]

Right now the main buyer brokers and brandable marketplaces are largely ignoring the non .com options, so not surprising 3/4 of startups are choosing .com. I think there is room for a new player serving that niche.

I happened to be checking out Brandpa very recently so I remember what they said about this:

“What TLDs do you accept?

“We only accept .com domains. In the past we accepted some other TLDs, but experience has taught us that nearly all our customers want dot-com domains.”

https://brandpa.com/start-selling

I feel that new gTLDs currently seem less possible to use as alternatives for brandables than they might be for certain exact match style names (if the dot com is unavailable).

But innovative short names like z.online do sound pretty cool. One I like is Sea.horse - which Michael Berkens used to own but last I heard was going to drop due to the high premium renewals!

(Most of my income comes from selling dot com brandables.)

 

[BrandEntrance.com]

Thanks for providing the data in this thread @JB LionsI was also surprised by just 2% .org as well as it seems lots of crowd funded startups and crypto are operating on .org

Could that be because of the rush that was made on .com crypto names?

 

[Bob Hawkes]

Could that be because of the rush that was made on .com crypto names?

I might be misunderstanding your meaning @jamesall but agree that vast majority in that niche went .com, but with a few noted names on .org and generally a modest increase in real world use of .org year by year, was surprised it was so low. Also surprising that .net apparently from was used by no startups in the analysis. I realize that interest in .net is generally down, but with neural networks, crowd funding, peer services, networked .,, etc might have expected some.

The number of registrations for all new gTLD combined is about equal to .net and .org combined, so proportionately in this analysis the new extensions have double adoption rate in startups to the alternate legacy extensions (although very low in both cases). Why are .ai and .io the only ones (other than .com and possibly .co) that do better than overall adoption? Is the efficiency of availability in Park.io where many are sold part of answer?

Thanks for your quote from Brandpa site @BrandableDomain. No doubt marketplaces serve what companies want. But I am surprised no one yet has really tried a marketplace for startups that at least includes other possibilities beyond .com and a few .co.

Bob

 

[BrandableDomain]

The number of registrations for all new gTLD combined is about equal to .net and .org combined, so proportionately in this analysis the new extensions have double adoption rate in startups to the alternate legacy extensions (although very low in both cases). Why are .ai and .io the only ones (other than .com and possibly .co) that do better than overall adoption? Is the efficiency of availability in Park.io where many are sold part of answer?

My theory about why .ai and .io have a high adoption rate also explains the success of .app and .dev.

Dot APP is now Number 12 and dot DEV has already leapt into the new gTLD Top 40 Chart at Number 36!

Very good results for what I would have expected to be fairly small niches.

So the theory is that tech guys and gals are the early adopters because they understand all the things like DNS, authcodes, transfers, HTML and CSS that discourage most other people.

The situation is comparable to how the only people using the “world wide web” in 1986 were computer scientists. Nobody else had a clue about what they were doing.

 

[BrandableDomain]

Thanks for your quote from Brandpa site @BrandableDomain. No doubt marketplaces serve what companies want. But I am surprised no one yet has really tried a marketplace for startups that at least includes other possibilities beyond .com and a few .co.

It probably just comes down to scarcity versus abundance. Dot coms are pretty well “sold out” so a market emerged where lots of profits could be made by domain investors and the marketplace could earn good commissions.

No other extension has anywhere near the 139 million registrations that dot com has.

On the other hand there are so many names available for hand registration in the new gTLDs (and other legacy extensions) that it may take a long time for a significant aftermarket to develop. Simply because customers can still find a good domain to hand register. So they can avoid the marketplaces if they don’t mind not having a dot COM.

It should eventually evolve, but I can’t see why the principle of Rick Schwartz’s “20 Year Plan” don’t at least equally apply to the new gTLDs if not more so.

Having said that, the new platform Names.club seems to be trying to feature lots of alternative extensions:

https://www.names.club/

 

[BrandEntrance.com]

Having said that, the new platform Names.club seems to be trying to feature lots of alternative extensions:

https://www.names.club/

That's a great tip.

• This is a non-exclusive listing. Your names can be listed for sale at other marketplaces, and you agree to alert us to remove your listing should the name sell elsewhere.
  
• We can accept any top-level domain, including .com. All names must have Standard Renewal Fees. We cannot list names with Premium renewal prices.
  
• Names must be priced at $5,000 or more to be listed.
  
• If a name sells through Names.club, you will receive net 70% of the listing price, so please price your names accordingly. For example, for a name listed at $5,000 you will receive $3,500. If you want to net $5,000 the name should be priced at $7,144.
  
• For Easy Payment sales, you are paid over 60 months. For example, for a name listed at $5,000 your net sales of $3,500 would be paid $58.33 per month until paid in full.
  
• If an Easy Payment buyer stops paying before the name is paid in full, you get the name back and keep all payments you have received to that point.

® Names.club

 

[offthehandle]

I ran across an interesting old thread that applies here.

“You guys investing in gTLD's keep forgetting the single most important piece of the puzzle. Consumer Acceptance! THEY my friends will be YOUR ultimate jury. Not a bunch of domainers slapping each other on the back in a domain forum.”
Rick Schwartz

https://www.namepros.com/threads/na...etter-as-a-gtld-than-a-dot-com.1015320/page-3