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

 

[mwzd]

Sell, Sell, Panic Sell

I'm buying single word .coms at reg fee... feel free to pm me. Even cvcv.com / quad premium .com etc...

There's no panic tbh, it will take a considerable amount of money... not to mention tech to own your own TLD.... at least in the near future. Assuming the figure Kevin Ham paid for .cm is correct you're looking at $50 million approx + annual management costs.

Its easy to become a registrar today (well, easier) but how many people are? Less than 1k if I count it right - http://www.icann.org/registrars/accredited-list.html and this is out of a total online population of 1.3 Billion!

 

[nrmillions]

People like to say that .mobi will be outdated because of technology but even domain names all together might not exist in the future if technology advances. As technology changes with search engines and other things people might not even directly type domains in anymore. I'm sure to start in the future we will see similar things to dotworlds.net where you can reg in front and after the dot such as getting the domain real.estate and new.york and coca.cola

Eventually .com could seem like ancient history. I'm not saying this is going to happen within the next few years but eventually. Things could move from regging both sides of the dot to not even using domains at all in the future. Anyone who thinks 100% that for all eternity people will be using domain names with .com as king is crazy. Technology is constantly evolving and we didnt even have the web until the 1990's which wasnt very long ago at all.

 

[cityforums.com]

IF this goes through ... it WILL hurt alot of domainers big and small. :td:

 

[netfleet]

It looks to me, this will only strenghten .com as the most desired extension

I couldn't disagree more... values of all domains are largely dictated by supply and demand. .com domains that have risen in value have only done so becaues more and more people are using the web (increased demand) and supply is limited (finite number of reasonable domain names).

As Paul Twomey said, "It's a massive increase in the geography of the real estate of the internet"

This will increase supply drastically and give potential buyers a range of 10's or 100's of 1,000's of extensions to choose from. Sure .com would be the best (and always be so IMO) but with so many alternatives, .com values are going to have to seriously move to be competitive.

One thging that would be certain if this does take place is an unimaginable amount of confusion within the inetrnet using public and a massive s**tfight between competing TM holders and cybersquatters as each extension becomes available.

 

[GreenGambler]

This is something that I"ve thought about for a LONG time. IT is all, crazy, cool and sucky at the same time. lol I think change is good and as said, .com will always be king, however this will take a LOT of money out of the .com market and put it into these new emerging markets.

 

[dgridley]

What it boils down to is the registrars are in it for the buck.. domainers will be hurt bad initially by this turn of events tho eventually we may see it settle out at levels much lower than they are now. I think it will even the playing field. We may not see so much in the way of parking or speculation and it may mean we'll see more in the way of development because domains will be affordable.

 

[wot]

"The plan would also allow for the new domain names to be internationalised, and so could be written in scripts for Asian and Arabic languages. "


Wonder what they would call them

 

[metronome]

not sure about http://coca.cola or http://coke.cola, they look kinda akward.
but if they can buy http://coke or http://pepsi, then it will has great effect on .com I guess.

 

[Beachie]

GTLDs require physical infrastructure so, as the article points out, owning your own extension won't be something that everyone can afford. I think we'll just end up with a few more irrelevant extensions that no-one knows about. Who here has ever visited a .travel, .pro, .aero or .museum? When a few new extensions fail, the idea will die off, because there won't be enough investors willing to gamble ICANNs approval fees and on-going costs.

I can't see eBay wasting their time with .ebay - they already have the option of using books.ebay.com or ebay.com/books - why confuse the consumer even more and dilute their brand?

ICANN seems to be making moves to prevent phishing scams, but this just opens a Pandora's box of confusion..

If in doubt, people will type .com

 

[autotim]

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.

 

[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: