news The Domain Industry Is About To Change BIGTIME!!!

[daj]

The net could see its biggest transformation in decades if plans to open up the address system are passed.

The net's regulators will vote on Thursday to decide if the strict rules on so-called top level domain names, such as .com or .uk, can be relaxed.

If approved, it could allow companies to turn their brands into domain names while individuals could also carve out their own corner of the net.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/7468855.stm

 

[Ray]

not to bash this thread... but this is the 4th thread on this subject ive seen today...

 

[npcomplete]

This simply means that webusers will forget even trying to remember a TLD and instead rely more and more on search engines to find what they want. Look at the top searches on key words on any search engine and you will find that people use google to navigate to msn or yahoo! Already they cannot be bothered to enter a full website address and this development means they have even more reason not to bother. TLD's are about to become mostly irrelvent. Revenues from direct navigation are about to disappear altogether. Direct navigation traffic is way below 1% anyway and goes mostly to parked pages that google now allows advertisers to opt out of. So, you can expect all but the very very best .com names to fall in value and all secondary or emerging .com names (geo or otherwise) bought for appreciation/parked revenues to fall hugely. Take a look at Dark Blue in Aussie. Seems like they're now projecting less than USD10 per doman per year for parked domains....which hardly covers costs. The future for domainers could be very bleak indeed. Expect to see lots of drops very soon. Develop your domains or lose money - it really is that simple now. Oh, maybe you can hedge your losses by buying google and yahoo on dips (even at 50x eps!) because they are the real ones that will benefit from this huge huge development.

and this was your *first* post! Welcome!!!

Also, excellent thoughts. I agree this will definitely increase search engine traffic.

 

[raredn.com]

Trademark holders, like Coke, Mcdonalds have free rights to the .com version of their name, why would they ever want to stoop to some other infereior alternative and pay big bucks to move their website from millions of dollars of already invested development to something inferior :]

Long live .com, the king of domain names :tu:

 

[netfleet]

This simply means that webusers will forget even trying to remember a TLD and instead rely more and more on search engines to find what they want. Look at the top searches on key words on any search engine and you will find that people use google to navigate to msn or yahoo! Already they cannot be bothered to enter a full website address and this development means they have even more reason not to bother. TLD's are about to become mostly irrelvent. Revenues from direct navigation are about to disappear altogether. Direct navigation traffic is way below 1% anyway and goes mostly to parked pages that google now allows advertisers to opt out of. So, you can expect all but the very very best .com names to fall in value and all secondary or emerging .com names (geo or otherwise) bought for appreciation/parked revenues to fall hugely. Take a look at Dark Blue in Aussie. Seems like they're now projecting less than USD10 per doman per year for parked domains....which hardly covers costs. The future for domainers could be very bleak indeed. Expect to see lots of drops very soon. Develop your domains or lose money - it really is that simple now. Oh, maybe you can hedge your losses by buying google and yahoo on dips (even at 50x eps!) because they are the real ones that will benefit from this huge huge development.

and this was your *first* post! Welcome!!!

Also, excellent thoughts. I agree this will definitely increase search engine traffic.

That's what I thought - great first post!

Trademark holders, like Coke, Mcdonalds have free rights to the .com version of their name, why would they ever want to stoop to some other infereior alternative and pay big bucks to move their website from millions of dollars of already invested development to something inferior :]

Long live .com, the king of domain names :tu:

That may be so for the big, big end of town but for every one Macdonalds, there are 100 million other restaurants brands - these smaller players are the ones which control the markets. Also this argument doesn't hold for generics of course...

 

[owntype]

Then I will set a big $$$$$$ budget to secure the following extensions:

.con
.c0n
.co0m
.coom
.ccom
.comm
.cpom
.comn
.
.
.

 

[npcomplete]

Then I will set a big $$$$$$ budget to secure the following extensions:

.con
.c0n
.co0m
.coom
.ccom
.comm
.cpom
.comn
.
.
.

Funny, but ICANN has stated many times that they are going to *try* to eliminate/minimize confusion with future tld releases. Of course what ICANN says and what ICANN does can be at odds...

 

[DomainTalker]

This simply means that webusers will forget even trying to remember a TLD and instead rely more and more on search engines to find what they want.

Look at the top searches on key words on any search engine....TLD's are about to become mostly irrelvent.

Revenues from direct navigation are about to disappear altogether.....So, you can expect all but the very very best .com names to fall in value...

Basically, I agree, autotim...

...Except...in your scenario, instead of saying: "expect all but the very very best .com names to fall in value...", I'd amend that to say: "....all but the very, very best keyword names to fall in value...' ...because entering keywords is how people want to use the internet, intuitively - not entering extensions - and, Search Engines give priority to that intuitive use.


I can see a time coming when extensions are simply irrelevant, too...In that world, the keyword(s) + development are the only things that matter + how effectively you promote & market the developed site to determine success, or failure (ie profit/loss & capital value of the name from traffic)....ie 95% of undeveloped names (no matter how 'good') may well have little or no, real value, at all - just possible value.


In this scenario, the only real competitive commercial drivers for the value of the names would be traffic - but, traffic derived from developed sites, that rank highly....So, not all great generic keywords would even be valuable - depending on what the owner of the names does with them, to get traffic...


...In this scenario.....Development AND brilliant promotion becomes King - and, the power of .com, per se, declines to a par with any other (now irrelevant) extension - ie, simply a word is the business & development opportunity.


So...the park & hold model to get traffic could effectively disappear because Search Engines will intuitively match people's intuitive use of words (ie without extension), and, give priority in directing keyword (without extension) queries to developed sites, not parked links....

...eg....Take identical top keywords that people have (earlier) registered in different extensions - eg, say, Food.com/Food.ca/Food.asia etc etc)....'Food' is a great generic name - but, of, say, these examples, the only keyword 'Food' names that may have value are those that are developed sites -AND those whose site promotion etc is good enough that they are the ones that get traffic.....So (in an extreme case) an undeveloped Food.com, may become virtually worthless, because the Search Engines ignore it - but, a brilliantly developed & marketed Food (dot) no extension, could become enormously valuable.

...so may BringYourDreams (dot) no extension....if it was a great concept, that caught on.


The 'domainer' business model of trading names would also be radically redefined.


May take awhile....but, it could happen...

.

 

[treebytheriver]

have you seen this:

"The application fee for a domain name has not been set, but candidates estimate that it could range from $39,000 to $390,000."

 

[DomainMayhem.com]

I can see a time coming when extensions are simply irrelevant, too...In that world, the keyword(s) + development are the only things that matter + how effectively you promote & market the developed site to determine success, or failure (ie profit/loss & capital value of the name from traffic)....ie 95% of undeveloped names (no matter how 'good') may well have little or no, real value, at all - just possible value.


In this scenario, the only real competitive commercial drivers for the value of the names would be traffic - but, traffic derived from developed sites, that rank highly....So, not all great generic keywords would even be valuable - depending on what the owner of the names does with them, to get traffic...


...In this scenario.....Development AND brilliant promotion becomes King - and, the power of .com, per se, declines to a par with any other (now irrelevant) extension - ie, simply a word is the business & development opportunity.


So...the park & hold model to get traffic could effectively disappear because Search Engines will intuitively match people's intuitive use of words (ie without extension), and, give priority in directing keyword (without extension) queries to developed sites, not parked links....

I would absolutely agree with this statement. Learn SEO now (I'm actually beginning to read up on it more myself). Even with minisites, SEO can definitely benefit them.

 

[xXDanteXx]

have you seen this:

"The application fee for a domain name has not been set, but candidates estimate that it could range from $39,000 to $390,000."

very spendy price to pay. I really don't think it wil do us any harm, at all, if we even see it happen.

I think people would definitely pay that much if they see a greater ROI

For example, I am sure anyone will pay $400,000 for these extensions.
.vom
.xom
.c0m
.con
.cim
.cpm

I know I would. :lala:

 

[homebuyer]

My TLD

Just think, each and every domainer will finally be able to have his/her own two-character domain:

AA.kfkdjf848fkdknier4jfeffdkdkmcbbxioowzxmcnvojskskdj

 

[autotim]

The application fee of $39-390k is peanuts for businesses and it does not represent a barrier to entry which will artificially support TLD prices.

Until widespread use of the internet, most companies had a phone number that they advertised to some extent (even on their stationary). To the average punter, these numbers were insufficiently recognisable to distinguish from the next (people couldn’t remember numbers – same problem with IP’s, thus the DNS) number, so along came the yellow pages and later 1800-JUNK kind of numbers. Now the problem is that there are going to be so many TLD’s, gTLD’s and ccTLD’s that users will be faced with immense confusion as to which TLD to use to navigate to their destination (except to those companies that have already established a brand on the internet under .com) …..which means they will simply visit a search engine. Thus, there is no reason why bristolsockshop.com will be any more or less valuable than bristolsockshop.tv or bristolsock.shop.

 

[DnEbook]

fashion.shop ????????

 

[autotim]

evirtual1 - what does 'fashion.shop ????????' actually mean?

 

[DnEbook]

just a example of what someone may wish to create if we can choose our own

 

[Charley]

I don't see this being worth anything.

Then I will set a big $$$$$$ budget to secure the following extensions:

.con
.c0n
.co0m
.coom
.ccom
.comm
.cpom
.comn
.
.
.

 

[raredn.com]

Just think, each and every domainer will finally be able to have his/her own two-character domain:

AA.kfkdjf848fkdknier4jfeffdkdkmcbbxioowzxmcnvojskskdj

Funny one

 

[accent]

.museum
.coop
.aero
.travel
Well over two hundred country extensions
even .biz - which was intended to directly compete with .com

If all those have not diminished .com, why would more of them have much effect?

I posted on this issue months ago, few noticed, nobody was worried. Now everybody is jumping at shadows. $4 gas will do that to people.

 

[johntv]

.museum
.coop
.aero
.travel
Well over two hundred country extensions
even .biz - which was intended to directly compete with .com

If all those have not diminished .com, why would more of them have much effect?

I posted on this issue months ago, few noticed, nobody was worried. Now everybody is jumping at shadows. $4 gas will do that to people.

Fully agree!

This will do no harm. Actually, I even think that in times of more confusion on the internet (more extensions) people and companies will even stick more to the already established and recognizable extensions.

 

[raghav_romil]

i dont think so if even this revolution comes, this can be a success. actually this leaves a lot of less scope for the actual domaing thing. domain registrars would not have gone ahead with new extensions. their opening of new extensions mean that actually there is a lot of more scope in the cctld and other ones.. probably go daddy sells .info 's for $ 1 currently. it didnt do it before, and who know s wat will be the price for .info's, i personally feel that watever be the extension (uf course must relate to the domain) the name is very important. and if there is no tld then it leaves a very less scope for various domain names and i dont see that happening,...

p.s - godaddy' bob parson has a lot of influence on net, he could ufcourse see it coming. he recently auctioned .me (i, me , myself).. so i suppose that s a proof.. but i might be wrong too.

 

[networkmsia]

.com is like prime real estate in the REAL WORLD. Owning a premium generic 1 word .com is like owning a skyscraper in a huge city such as New York, London, Tokyo, and etc.

Yes the Government will always develop properties throughout the country, even in odd places, in rural places. But you can observe that the prime .com properties just like skyscrapers will continue to rise.

 

[james0306]

We will pretty possible to see following things once the revolution comes.

(1) In the beginning, nice keyword and brandable .com prices rise, due to the confusion brought by new extensions.
(2) Because of the high price of .com, new companies start to pick up nice and cheap names with new extensions. Some nice sites show up gradually.
(3) After 7-10 years, new generations are totally used all the creative extensions. Premium .COM are still favorites of big companies which show credibility and trustable. However, type-in traffic will drop dramatically. We will see huge drop of Poor quality .com then.
(4) People use search engines heavily, SEO become much more important.

Any comments are welcome.

 

[Charley]

.museum
.coop
.aero
.travel

People think that this will create awareness. But how many are going to be registered ? Not to mention the registration prices of each.

 

[accent]

We will pretty possible to see following things once the revolution comes.

(1) In the beginning, nice keyword and brandable .com prices rise, due to the confusion brought by new extensions.
(2) Because of the high price of .com, new companies start to pick up nice and cheap names with new extensions. Some nice sites show up gradually.
(3) After 7-10 years, new generations are totally used all the creative extensions. Premium .COM are still favorites of big companies which show credibility and trustable. However, type-in traffic will drop dramatically. We will see huge drop of Poor quality .com then.
(4) People use search engines heavily, SEO become much more important.

Any comments are welcome.

These things have been happening with the extensions we have now. On the radio in the last week or so I have heard (along with the .coms) .net, .org, .biz, .us and - believe it or not - a .bz (Seattle radio). So there is some spill over into other extensions.

For the domain investor the question is "where is the best ROI?" Snoop has been saying, based on his research, that the other extensions trail .com in ROI (he may have included .org and .net, I forget). So that already established trend would point to the continued growth of .com.

There are how many streets in the New York area? Yet a small section of Fifth Avenue still commands extremely high Real Estate prices. People will always want the "best" address for their business. Com.

The internet continues to grow rapidly. The mobile internet has barely begun. The inflow of new end-users will be far larger than the loss to new extensions.

The one thing that has changed, I suspect, is that the better names will be auctioned or otherwise capitalized - no more landrush gems for us in these new extensions.

 

[james0306]

Thanks for the input, Charley and accentnepal,

I have few concerns here.

People think that this will create awareness. But how many are going to be registered ? Not to mention the registration prices of each.

The internet continues to grow rapidly. The mobile internet has barely begun. The inflow of new end-users will be far larger than the loss to new extensions.

We are actually talking about hundreds, or even thousands new extensions, instead of the current 70-80. Many of them will be even provided to end users for free. ( I will do so, if I can afford .shop annual fee. Keep some premium word, and provide all the rest to others for free or at a very low cost, 10 cents per year)

As talked to my 7 years old nephew yesterday, he doesn't even know .com is the very first extension on internet. All he cares if there are needed contents under the site, no matter what the extension is.

I am not saying that any new extension can replace .com, however, I don't think any reason can stop the huge dilution.

How do you guys think ?