.info The .info Extension

[theparamount]

As a mildly competent domainer I see no true value in the .info extension. While I love seeing them sell I never see them put to much good use. I don't see many end users loving the extension and on the namepros forum as of late, I've seen several HUGE bulk sales of many solid .info names.

I guess what I'm wondering is what others think of the extensions. It seems to be an extension not quite as bad as .name but seemly useless to the end user. Do you think so or what are your thoughts?

 

[Eric]

need to get around new york? mta.info

www.mta.info (gotta link it, most people are lazy - :p )

It's a nice site, too.

 

[Keynes]

A beautiful info site: Spain.info

 

[nrmillions]

You can find some developed sites in almost any extension. The thing is if you walk down the street and start asking people to name a .info site (in the U.S.) they wont be able to. If you ask them to name a .com site they will go on and on with ebay, amazon, facebook, myspace, yahoo, google, etc.

 

[Keynes]

You can find some developed sites in almost any extension.

Agreed, but this misses the point: large organizations are starting to view .info as an alternative to com/org for major websites. Spain.info is the official website for the nation's department of tourism. Sure, .com will always reign as king, but we're talking about the growth of other extensions are credible (and differentiated) alternatives. For travel/tourism/information, .info is emerging...

 

[Lasher]

Here's a .info I sold at the beginning of this year - http://www.hso.info

That's at least one end user sale.

 

[akcampbell]

One question I like to ask people is what .com is short for; 1) Company, 2) Commercial or 3) Communication. Non techy Internet users will give a different answer every time. Far fewer people have heard of .info but everybody who has, knows what it stands for and the type of content to expect.

I don't know if anybody has seen this list of the 100 first .dot coms registered
http://www.jottings.com/100-oldest-dot-com-domains.htm
No business.com, creditcards.com, or sex.com to be seen. I hope Symbolics.com didn't pay somebody to design that logo.

The point of my question and this list is that .com has no divine right to be the only extension used widely on the Internet. It's a historical accident with a huge first mover advantage. .info has more intrinic value and makes more sense for information related websites.

It took .com and the Internet 10-15 years to get established so .info hasn't done too badly reaching 4m registrations in the first 5 years. I agree with what somebody else said about it getting harder and harder for new extensions to make progress. .info is one of the few extensions that has any chance of doing that.

NewYork.info is the most expensive .info sale to date at $46,000. I bid the owner of financial.info on Sedo and he wants $100,000 for it. I don't think he'll get that yet but it wouldn't surprise me to see the first six figure dollar .info sale within 2-3 years.

 

[Lasher]

Unfortunately, the .info extension has been destroyed by spammers and scammers. All those .99 cent registration specials make great "throwaway" domains to launch your latest round of spamming or phishing from.

Just yesterday I was searching for known forum spammers for my recently upgraded (to VB) forum and found at least 3 lists blocking @.info - the entire TLD.

 

[kleszcz]

Great vision and reading akcampbell.

We've already noticed *some* drop catchers investing thousands of money into .info extension.

 

[Keynes]

It took .com and the Internet 10-15 years to get established so .info hasn't done too reaching 4m registrations in the first 5 years. I agree with what somebody else said about it getting harder and harder for new extensions to make progress. .info is one of the few extensions that has any chance of doing that.

I agree - there are challenges, including the incentive to cheat given the .99 prices, but I think the extension is maturing. Perhaps we'll see a price increase from the registry, along with a growth in developed sites to further encourage .info adoption.

 

[harkster]

Seems that most either love or hate the extension.

I bought DotInfoSites in the info and com some time ago with the thought of putting up a .info only directory. May be getting close to time. I would closely monitor submissions.

 

[bgray]

The problem with the .info extension is that they are being sold by registrars for so cheap.

Because of this .info domains are the choice of spammers and are giving end users a bad taste in their mouth for the extension.

I know several big webmasters that are blocking emails from .info extensions because of the amount of spam they get from .info sites.

I don't see anyway for the extension to recover short of raising registration prices and giving it a few years for spammers to use something else.

 

[akcampbell]

Presumably, it would only take up to 1 year for Afilias to sort out the problem with spamming by increasing the annual registration fee? I guess they do analysis on registration fees versus projected registrations and dropped registrations and consider spam a price worth paying in the short term to maximise total domains registered. If you are providing content in return for PPC commission why would you need to email users anyway?

 

[gpmgroup]

Our network handles quite a lot of spam and most of the spamvertised sites are not .info's

At the moment by far the most link to .com and then .hk domains.

 

[JGjg]

I like using them for affiliate redirects.

 

[whitebark]

Our network handles quite a lot of spam and most of the spamvertised sites are not .info's

At the moment by far the most link to .com and then .hk domains.

indeed - I remember reading a study by a spam company that correlated the domain names - .info was fourth or fifth overall if I remember right and yes, .com was the one most often used for spamming and scamming.

As for many not getting the real usage for .info domains at this time, that's okay by me! Means many more affordable .info domains for me. I put up a new .info site on wednesday last week before i left for a get-away. It was a fresh reg and not listed in the search engines. I didn't even do any backlinking for it. This morning when I got in I checked on it, and it has already made $14! This is another three word .info domain getting instant type-in traffic.

Please keep hating .info.