Hi everybody, I am new to this forum and I am following with interest this .tel
I am biased because after reading everything about .tel that I could get my hands (or eyes) on, I ended up purchasing $70,000 worth of domains. I never invested in domains before and I don't think that I will ever invest again in domains over the next 10 years. I am a doctor practicing in New York and I never gamble more than $100/trip when I go to Vegas.
I don't think that people understand how much money small business owners put into traditional sources of advertising and how low the quality of these services really are for both customers and business owners- the fact that .tel gives us some control over our advertising is likely to be nothing short of revolutionary (unfortunately I have no association with Telnic, but if they want to send me money for what I have to say they should be able to find me).
I should know more about my work field (medical) to develop a more logical, better quality directory then the guys from traditional phonebooks- I don't think they understand our needs, our local business, or our fields of work, and frankly I have no reason to believe that they actually care- for them if they make money they are happy, and quality doesn't seem to fit into their business equation, because the truth is that before Telnic there was no real great alternative in advertising (other than google and yahoo discussed below). The view that .tel is the biggest technological development in the communication business since the development of .com is probably appropiate, and it is not hard to predict that it will produce major changes in the lives of most people in the next few years. Maybe my perspective is slightly different from most people on this forum and I am sorry to place such a long message on this board, but this is how I see things:
- .tel is a new thing, and nobody knows where this will take us; my brother works in IT for a financial company and he didn't invest any money in .tel yet; he might get some domains after March 24; a few highly specialized people working for companies like AT&T also didn't know what to make of .tel and can't predict what will happen with this .tel in the future + don't seem to know much about it yet- maybe I didn't talk to the right people so far....; people working with VC also don't know what to make of .tel
- personally I think that traditional phonebooks will be officially dead in less than 5 years- next year I will stop all advertising in traditional phonebooks ($250/ month for simple ads for each of the 2 paper phonebooks that are widely available in my neighborhood- and their associated internet directories are nothing short of a disaster). Remember this was the current advertising standard for regular small business owners like myself, and we were not happy with it but we couldn't do anything about it. And now .tel comes; I will encourage everybody around me to make this the new advertising standard, because right now it is the best and most reasonable (and convenient) advertising opportunity out there, for both business owners and consumers out there. Nobody knows if this will be the case 5 years from now because nobody know if other large companies with more financial resources than Telnic will not also try to use the DNS in a fashion more or less similar to Telnic; if it took Telnic 6 years to get approval from ICANN (and double check on the background of the financial backers of Telnic at that time) to use the DNS in the way they do it now, I am wondering how likely it is for other companies to get similar approvals- and would it be fair for ICANN to allow other people to use the DNS in a similar fashion soon after making these guys at Telnic waiting for 6 years for approval? It is likely that these guys at ICANN took their time to make this decision, either because they knew that this use of the DNS will change the world, or alternatively because the people at ICANN are a mess- or maybe both....
- I will continue to advertise with Google for now (and I might start with Yahoo soon), but I can't say that I am very happy with the fact that I am paying per click at Google.... Personally I think that the biggest threat to Telnic are companies like Yahoo and Google, because I think that there is a real possibility that Telnic might cut into their advertising profits. In the end the consumers and business owners will hopefully decide what is better for them now that they have other more decent advertising options.
- one major point that I have never seen discussed in association with .tel is the fact that the people likely to use .tel and currently adopt it as the new standard now are in general people who have a mental capacity above average and the financial means to afford mobile devices that will use .tel- qualities that make them very good potential consumers and customers for certain services in this tough economy. What I am trying to say is that currently there is already an advantageous pre-selection of the consumers who will use .tel on mobile devices, and statistically this base is quickly expanding with the explosion in the use of mobile devices- I think that this should be a major point to be emphasized by people who plan to make money from .tel advertising- many of these people using .tel are likely to be the ideal potential customer. Add to these people already using mobile devices the small business owners who feel that at least for now Telnic is more friendly to their needs than the companies in charge of paper phone books & giants like Google and Yahoo with their virtual advertising collective monopoly on the Internet, and you might have a phenomenon with .tel that will change the face of how people do business everywhere around the world. Don't assume this will be a Western Europe phenomenon- in the past 20 years I saw more people in Eastern Europe using fancier mobile phones than the ones that I used to see in the US. Furthermore, the most enthusiastic people predicting a great success for .tel were a few 18 year olds who are getting ready to graduate hs- they were amazed with the speed of information delivery and made absolutely no negative comments on the spartan design of .tel sites- they understand that that's enough to convey the substance of what both customers and business owners need- too much bs currently with traditional websites. I don't know if this is good or bad, and I wouldn't generalize, but maybe the feedback helps.
- another last positive observation that I will make about .tel is that the market for traditional websites (.com, etc) with longer names 2 or 3 words is likely to significantly expand if the owners purchased shorter .tel domains that are used in conjunction with this longer domain names- when I bought the shorter .tel and linked it to longer .com sites, I almost felt that the longer .com (or .net) name was not anymore a disadvantage (because you don't have to type the whole name anymore), but can actually contribute additional clarifying information, descriptive detail or a message
If I type jeans.tel and link it to buypremiumjeans.com and click on it, it is probably still quicker than typing in lets say buyjeans.com- and people will quickly realize this advantage- it might seem minor but multiply that with astronomical numbers and you will realize the advantage of a faster technology like .tel...
- one major concern that I have is that neither Telnic nor the company in charge of telhosting don't seem to be very straightforward about whether there will be hosting charges later on for larger .tel directories- but maybe it is too early even for them to know how the .tel phenomenon will evolve. So far they seem to be very reasonable people, and it is in their interest to keep it that way....
Anyway, good luck to everybody regardless of your view on .tel. Sincere congratulations and thanks to these guys at Telnic, because for now I think that you guys offer a great, much needed service for humanity- don't let success change that. If nothing else you will save people a lot of time with your faster DNS technology. I'll look forward to see you guys in Time Magazine at the end of 2009 or 2010- you are visionaries and you made history, regardless of which way the commercial success of .tel will go.... and nobody can take that away from you now. These are my predictions for what will happen with this newer use of technology, and you have to agree that they are based on real life (but limited) observations and considerations. I hope that I didn't offend anybody with my ignorance....
