DubDubDubDot said:
No matter how you spin it, .tel is a boring social site that just so happens to have it's own TLD (ICANN should never have approved it). You would have better luck running a business off of a MySpace profile than .tel because you can at least customize MySpace.
In my opinion, the rigidity of .tel addresses is an asset, not a liability. Here's a repost of a write-up I posted elsewhere:
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By far the most convincing attribute of .tel addresses isn't what most blogs are talking about -- quickly updating data, no hosting, etc. -- but that, if apps are developed for mobile phones, instead of having phone numbers in your phone, you could store .tel domains that your friends can update as their info changes (putting your friends in control of *their* contact information stored in *your* phone). This means no more “dead numbers” or emails flying back and forth saying “I changed my number.” There must be 1,000s of Facebook status updates and 100,000s of emails daily that inform people of changes in phone numbers. All of these people would immediately understand what .tel offers: It takes a headache away for them -- and that alone is worth the $10-$15/year to register a .tel.
What does this mean in the short term? It means that .tel addresses could become a new way to contact people (it’s easier to remember than a phone number AND, as the data stored on the .tel changes, those changes will automatically propagate to all the mobile devices the .tel contact is saved on). There are privacy issues that will need to be ironed out -- not everyone wants just anyone to be able to contact them (as an aside, corporations do!) – but everyone evaluating .tel should understand this: It’s not what *you* see on the .tel “page”; it’s what your mobile device sees – up-to-date contact information stored not on your phone, but on a central server.
What does this mean in the long term? It means that .tel domains could become the new vanity phone numbers. Remember the trade in 1-800 numbers of the 1990s? Many early domainers do – that’s what got them to recognize the scarcity of domains early on.
Here’s a long shot: It’s possible that generic .tel domains could become more valuable than generic 1-800 numbers. If the concept of .tel domains as proxies for phone numbers takes off, you’ll get more unsolicited, pre-qualified leads from people typing RealEstate.tel (not one of mine) into a browser or mobile device than you would from 1-800-RealEstate. My rationale: When is the last time you dialed a generic 1-800 number when looking for something? For me, never. When is the last time you typed in a generic domain when you were looking for something? For me, a few times a day. .tel could have the characteristics of vanity 1-800 numbers AND some of the type-in-traffic benefits of TLDs.
Additional thought:
I emailed a version of this post to a friend the other day. Let’s say his name is John Doe. Right before I clicked “send,” I thought, “What if on my phone I typed JohnDoe2.tel (assuming JohnDoe.tel is taken) to call my friend and to email him I did the same - just typed JohnDoe2.tel into the email "To" field?” Similar to the discussion above, either my email provider or an app I’m using would identify my friend’s email address from JohnDoe2.tel and send the email to that. I wouldn’t have to remember his email address or look it up.
