The .PRO Discussion

[InvisionTech]

It seems .PRO is slowly coming out of the cage with cheaper reg prices than they were a year ago and major registrars like netsol taking notice of the extension and promoting it.

Here are some that I picked up in last couple of days:

Alexandria.pro

Anchorage.pro

Arlington.pro

Belfast.pro

Birmingham.pro

Budapest.pro

Durham.pro

Fairfax.pro

Italian.pro

Lisbon.pro

Fire away with your regs after the relaunch on September 8th, 2008.

 

[siga]

was doing a bit of research on something unrelated to .pros came across this "best com .pro" omit the spaces within the quotations to check out a enduser pro site.

Re the worlds biggest pro domainer, that is a huge amount of .pro's

 

[akcampbell]

Any news on the transfer of Gulf.pro and Cool.pro? They are both still showing the seller as registrant.

I have added a new page on Total.pro about .pro restrictions. It's a dry topic so I added a comparison of James Bond and Bill Gate's eligibility. There is a good explanation of the old restrictions for posterity which I never understood fully until I wrote the article.

 

[sky]

What's .COM.AU got that .PRO hasn't got?

.COM.AU has got common sense. .PRO has "Princess and the Pea" syndrome.

.COM.AU relaxed their their restrictions. They liberalized the TLD and now .COM.AU is really starting to surge and grow. .COM.AU's history provides yet another example that byzantine draconian protectionist policies only hobble TLD's.

.ORG is an example of a domain TLD that can enforce a clear fair policy around a simple unambiguous standard. .PRO 2nd-level domains is an example of a 2LD that cannot.

.PRO is one of those areas where 3rd-level domains can clearly be very profession-specific. However 2nd-level .PRO domains such restrictions don't work because of the different kinds of professions, and because of how many legitimate true professions and professionals exist that don't require licensing or even have licensing boards, yet which require real skill, dedication and professionalism. There are just too many angles, niches and aspects of industries to track and license all of it. So why play mere semantics games with what 'professional' is.

Professional really means someone who is skilled and works in a profession. Why bastardize that around licensing which does not track all industries in the same way?

.PRO therefore has bundled too much implicit and unreasonable bias in their requirements. And for what? Stubbornness? Classism? I don't get it. It would be one thing if there was a clear simple policy that could be fairly and uniformly enforced. But since there isn't, why pretend there is?

For example, a professional software engineers with years of industry-equivalent experience and recognition have no way of being recognized as professionals by .PRO because there really isn't a uniform licensing system for what they do. .PRO unfairly excludes many legitimate professionals, which is an embarrassment for the character and elitism of the registry.

I understand that there is the 'professional image' that .PRO wants, but it doesn't mean anything real if it can't apply a good fair standard, and it cant. So now anyone who wants a .PRO has to focus on loopholes, and lowest-common-denominator professional licensing, which just makes the goals of the TLD absurd and meaningless anyway, so why maintain the charade?

.PRO's is attempting to use a simple formula to control a very complex problem and it just doesn't work. It just leaves the policies vague and ambiguous and subject to interpretation.

Registry, please open up 2nd-level .PROs - the registry will only profit, and the TLD will flourish. Everyone will be happier, richer and enjoy the .PRO domain. What good is a TLD to be so "pure" that it's marginalized?

Registry: You make most of your money from domainers, I suspect. You exploit the domainers you know want the domain and concede little or nothing, in spite of the fact that the serious flaws, imperfections and self-conflicting aspects of your policy are obvious. I think it's a shame.

 

[DomainNameWire]

The difference is .au is a country code domain, and they can do basically whatever they want with it. .Pro has to follow the rules it agreed to with ICANN.

 

[Kuli]

I always thought that there's only .com.au, not .co.au.

 

[akcampbell]

I think RegistryPro want to see .pro opened up because when ICANN expressed concern about Encirca's Pro Forwarding service in March 2005 and offered to recontract to remove the loophole, RegistryPro declined to do that.

Their mistake was not pushing for more advantageous terms second time around. .pro is actually more restricted now than it was before RegistryPro renegotiated their contract in 2008 because before people were free to register a .pro through Encirca without verification and there was nothing ICANN could do about it.

Price reductions rather than a supposed easing of restrictions have resulted in the increase in .pro registrations from 6,500 to 30,000 during 2008 because the demand for domains is price elastic. Prices fell by 80% and domains registered rose in line with that by fivefold. The net result is RegistryPro is making no more money now than it was before and with more registrars to support, they are probably worst off than before.

RegistryPro have to go back to ICANN, put their Income Statements for the last 5 years in front of them and tell them they can't go on unless restrictions are removed. ICANN are offering new gTLD's with no restrictions while continuing to strangle .pro with restrictions. My guess is that Hostway has lost several million dollars funding RegistryPro, when new extensions flood the market, the value of .pro to a bidder will disappear and Hostway will never get their money back, it will make more sense for a prospective registry to start from scratch with no restrictions than buy a loss making .pro contract.

If RegistryPro put reg fees up at the end of 2009 as their promotional reg fee claims imply, the number of .pros regged will fall back sharply from 30,000 and the registry will be no better off again. Their only option is to say to ICANN enough is enough, nobody can make money running a restricted extension let alone have cash left over to promote and grow it.

 

[sky]

I always thought that there's only .com.au, not .co.au.

Oops, you're right, my bad... I was listening to an interview with DNjournal founder Ron Jackson and I heard them say .COM.AU and I thought they meant .CO.AU... But same thing, the point they made was that it was really taking off now that the weid restrictions had been removed, and I thought that's exactly what needs to happen with .PRO

 

[snoop]

The difference is .com.au is the dominant extension in Australia, .pro isn't the domainant extension anywhere, in fact quite the opposite, it is widely considered to be junk.

 

[sky]

The difference is .com.au is the dominant extension in Australia, .pro isn't the domainant extension anywhere, in fact quite the opposite, it is widely considered to be junk.

That is a false dichotomy with the point I made. There's no denying that .com.au is a more serious and widely recognized domain of country-wide stature and that implies that it could catch on and be popular.

But that hasn't happened with .us so just being a 'country' related TLD is obviously not the only determining factor. The point is that it was the lessening of restrictions on .com.au. that triggered the recent boom.

And my point was the same would probably be true for .pro. Maybe not as big or as fast, but the implication is "ain't nothing going boom" while .pro is being stifled by bad policy.

.pro is only junk as long as it's not selling. And it won't sell while the rules are so screwed up. Change the rules, and it might sell; and when it sells, it won't be considered junk anymore. See how that works?

Unlike .mobi that just sounds funny, and has that working against it, IMO, .pro sounds good and so there's nothing inherently limiting about .pro, except how it's being managed by the registry.

 

[snoop]

That is a false dichotomy with the point I made. There's no denying that .com.au is a more serious and widely recognized domain of country-wide stature and that implies that it could catch on and be popular.

But that hasn't happened with .us so just being a 'country' related TLD is obviously not the only determining factor. The point is that it was the lessening of restrictions on .com.au. that triggered the recent boom.

.us is not the country code of the United States, .com is. Staple that to your wall, it is what most people think. Only in a technical, geeky way is .us the country code of the US.

.com.au is just as popular as it always was, it was always dominant, easing restrictions just resulted in them being able to be sold, that is why there is now more speculators interest and sales. .Pro is not comparable.

.pro is only junk as long as it's not selling. And it won't sell while the rules are so screwed up. Change the rules, and it might sell; and when it sells, it won't be considered junk anymore. See how that works?

Unlike .mobi that just sounds funny, and has that working against it, IMO, .pro sounds good and so there's nothing inherently limiting about .pro, except how it's being managed by the registry.

Nobody uses it, that is why it is junk, and it has very little purpose to really spur speculation.

 

[sky]

.us is not the country code of the United States, .com is. Staple that to your wall, it is what most people think. Only in a technical, geeky way is .us the country code of the US.

.COM is considered the USA country domain, however, it isn't just geeks that think that .us is becoming a hot commodity. Ron Jackson (you may have heard the name) says ccTLDs are picking up and .us is too, but I won't go into the reasons or what's going on with that, I'll let you figure that out on your own. If you're so rich that it doesn't matter, I'm happy for you. I'm not, and it does.

.com.au is just as popular as it always was, it was always dominant, easing restrictions just resulted in them being able to be sold, that is why there is now more speculators interest and sales. .Pro is not comparable.

Nobody uses it, that is why it is junk, and it has very little purpose to really spur speculation.[/QUOTE]

Well, I can't and haven't denied .pro has problems as a speculation domain. But I'm perfectly happy to have .pro be the TLD of new development. Why? Because it sounds *cool*. So I am one of those pressing the registry to change policy, while the .pro holders, including myself develop the sites. Meanwhile, I'm trying to keep my portfolio diversified. I'm going to hang onto my good .pro's though. We'll see who has the last word on them.

 

[snoop]

Well, I can't and haven't denied .pro has problems as a speculation domain. But I'm perfectly happy to have .pro be the TLD of new development. Why? Because it sounds *cool*. So I am one of those pressing the registry to change policy, while the .pro holders, including myself develop the sites. Meanwhile, I'm trying to keep my portfolio diversified. I'm going to hang onto my good .pro's though. We'll see who has the last word on them.

Who cares what you or I think it sounds like, the fact is nobody uses it.

 

[sky]

Who cares what you or I think it sounds like, the fact is nobody uses it.

No one uses it for trading. People are developing .PROs.
It's not like it's a bad thing. It's a name, google indexes it. I have one PR 3, with grammy award wining recording professionals using it as their page.

I have more sites underway.

It isn't that 'nobody' is using it, it's just not big.

But I'd rather have driver.pro than driver.us and driver.org for my own personal websites for example, so there are different ways to value .pro. Everyone including I realize that .pro is worth crap to try to sell at auction at this point. I'm not buying new .pros, but I am keeping the good keyword .pros I own that I have interest in developing.

 

[snoop]

No one uses it for trading. People are developing .PROs.
It's not like it's a bad thing. It's a name, google indexes it. I have one PR 3, with grammy award wining recording professionals using it as their page.

I have more sites underway.

It isn't that 'nobody' is using it, it's just not big.

Personally I've never visited one, seen one in a search engine, seen one advertised or heard of someone using one (other than domainers here). Obvously I didn't mean "nobody" literally but the usage is not significant.

But I'd rather have driver.pro than driver.us and driver.org for my own personal websites for example, so there are different ways to value .pro. Everyone including I realize that .pro is worth crap to try to sell at auction at this point. I'm not buying new .pros, but I am keeping the good keyword .pros I own that I have interest in developing.

If they sell for very little at auction that is because they are worth very little, if even the people who do like them aren't buying any more then that says it all.

 

[sky]

Personally I've never visited one, seen one in a search engine, seen one advertised or heard of someone using one (other than domainers here). Obvously I didn't mean "nobody" literally but the usage is not significant.

If they sell for very little at auction that is because they are worth very little, if even the people who do like them aren't buying any more then that says it all.

With their new website image, I can only think registry.pro are a bunch of pretentious snobs.

Their new image seems like they want movie image professionals and gives no acknowledgement of the various professionals their policy actually allows for.

The new website designe seems to say "Conceited? Stuck up? Think you're better than everyone else? Then .pro is the TLD for you!"

I think they're forgetting domains are about business and the registry is running the smartest business.

The TLD is making most of their money off of the very domainers they're screwing over and they seem too dense to take the clue. I hope they wake up.
Meanwhile, I'm hanging on to my best ones, because they're good keywords, sound good, and I want them to be the name of my sites. I'm sure once the SEO is in place the users will like the name too.

 

[snoop]

The TLD is making most of their money off of the very domainers they're screwing over and they seem too dense to take the clue. I hope they wake up.

That is how all new tlds work, who else do you think they are going to make money off? The easy money is from domainers.

 

[sky]

That is how all new tlds work, who else do you think they are going to make money off? The easy money is from domainers.

That's why I think the registry is being completely hypocritical.
I think they owe it to the bulk of their constituency to do the right thing.

I've discussed at some length the details of their policies, and trust me, there is a lot of about what they're doing that really doesn't make much sense. Anyway, from my standpoint, I don't have a lot to lose except a few bucks waiting for the story to change. I will probably let some of my domains drop if they don't change their policies, but I'll probably pay for a subset of them.

I think the registry will start losing money if they don't revisit their policies again.

 

[Sam]

I remember scanning the entire .pro zone file once and got a grand total of 4 names with overture with extention. Its dead, even .travel is killing it

 

[sky]

I remember scanning the entire .pro zone file once and got a grand total of 4 names with overture with extention. Its dead, even .travel is killing it

It's dead for trading. It's not dead for usability.

How is it dead to me if I have a .PRO name that I develop,
get backlinks, rank, etc... and people use it and like the name?
It doesn't seem to have much resale value but it still sounds good.

 

[snoop]

That's why I think the registry is being completely hypocritical.
I think they owe it to the bulk of their constituency to do the right thing.

You aren't ".pro's constituency", they don't represent you or owe you anything. As with any business the aim is to extract as much profits from you (the customer) as they can, they do that for their shareholders, that is who they have a duty towards. That isn't hypocitical, it is how business works.