.us .us market -- What can we do to stimulate it?

[fonzie_007]

The .us market has a lot of potential. Arguably, the .us market is a sleeping giant. Small to mid sized businesses are slowly starting to move into the .us space as .coms become more expensive. I'd like to brainstorm what we can do as domainers to help foster the .us market with end users.

Here are a couple of ideas (that could use refinement):
1) Sell .us domains to end users even if they aren't willing to pay what we expect for end user pricing. (e.g. I had a guy starting a business that wanted one of my .us domains and was only willing to pay slightly more than reseller rates. I declined, but in refusing to sell to him, the prospective buyer may have then moved on to develop a non-.us extension)
2) Start developing .us domains
3) Start using .us domains for our personal email
4) Educate our friends and family about .us domains

 

[Fundraiser]

hehe, I might give a kidney for business.us invcase you ever need one.

I had set a BIN of an arm and a leg but will certainly consider your generous offer. Of course keep in mind that what you are offering is used so while a domain is often increasing in value over time, your kidney is decreasing in value. Try not to use it while I consider the deal. I'll get back to you in a few weeks.

 

[DropLister]

Lol, I'll try, but I can't promise anything. Sold As-Is

 

[fonzie_007]

Just curious, does anyone have a contact at Neustar, specificially someone in their marketing department?

 

[Lasher]

Just curious, does anyone have a contact at Neustar, specificially someone in their marketing department?

They should partner with GD and run a big July 4th promotion on .US domains.

 

[fonzie_007]

I was hoping Toyota, GM, or Ford would start using .us for their commercials. Each of the companies tries to out-do the others for being the most tough and "American." Having a .us as a webpage would certainly extend with their current marketing messages.

 

[CrazyTech]

I'm suprised we haven't seen more of a sprint towards the .US domain. Everyone likes a patriotic company here in the US. What better way then to use the .us?

 

[acc]

Just curious, does anyone have a contact at Neustar, specificially someone in their marketing department?

Good idea to get someone there moving.

It may be an unfair contrast, but look what the Dot Mobi people are doing - nonstop promoting, development-support, industry marketing, serious business alliances. Boy would I like to see 1/10th of the same kind of effort by the .US registry. Other than the recent rumblings with the long overdue zip code project launch, it has seemed that their marketing department consists of one intern sitting by the phone waiting for it to ring.

-acc

 

[Fundraiser]

their marketing department consists of one intern sitting by the phone waiting for it to ring.

I think you are giving them waaaaaay to much credit.

 

[duceman]

I was hoping Toyota, GM, or Ford would start using .us for their commercials. Each of the companies tries to out-do the others for being the most tough and "American." Having a .us as a webpage would certainly extend with their current marketing messages.

Kind of funny that Volvo and BMW use .us for their U.S marketing (although the .us forwards to other sites) but not GM and Ford

 

[Lasher]

Volvo are owned by Ford.

There's a reason BMWs are BMWs and GMs, well, aren't.

Other than the recent rumblings with the long overdue zip code project launch, it has seemed that their marketing department consists of one intern sitting by the phone waiting for it to ring.
-acc

So we've established that Neustar suck at marketing. Let's help them out. My wife went to weather.com a few weeks ago and keyed in our zip code, etc. I told her 'just go to 32828.us its faster' ... she uses it all the time now.

Unless they team up with GD there isn't going to be a huge PR campaign for .US, they simply don't have the budget, so let's start doing it ourselves, one user at a time (who tells a friend who tells a friend who tells a friend, etc). The important part there is not where someone gets their weather from, but everytime they type in even a single .US it builds mindshare as a credible extension ... assuming what they get there is worthwhile.

 

[oldtimer]

That’s a very good idea, but perhaps we can go one step further and donate $100.00 each towards establishing a dot US owners association, assuming that there are 500 members that could add up to about 50K, the association then could use some of that money to make a few professionally designed dot US websites and promote them heavily on the national scale in order to bring more attention to dot US domains as a whole, this all could be done in a matter of weeks or you could wait a few more years in the hopes that people might find out about dot US on their own.

 

[duceman]

I agree with Oldtimer. The one thing that gave Mobi their muscle for PR was the corporate investors (I think the total was 14m). When you have that kind of investment and ability to burn cash on PR you can create a nice buzz.

I know that many of you have been champions of .us longer than myself and might be getting frustrated with painfully slow-in-coming market break out. But I've seen and been involved in many bad investments and I truefully think .us will turn out to be good investment. The one unknown is the time frame of the market break out.

 

[estibot.com]

I have every confidence in .us. I agree that it won't hurt the market to use .us for email and develop and promote your own .us sites!

I have seen increased interest in my .us domain names in recent months. Much more so than other extensions.

Great news on the video.us sale - looking forward to the release. Congrats

 

[Kate]

It would be nice to see .us being used more for political campaigns.
.us sounds patriotic while .com just does not fit IMO. Even .org fits better :lala:

 

[Fundraiser]

It would be nice to see .us being used more for political campaigns.
.us sounds patriotic while .com just does not fit IMO. Even .org fits better :lala:

You know me, I certainly like dot us and have registered one or two decent ones, but I am glad to hear you say .org fits political campaigns better than dot com. I agree fully. I have one truly elite ("premium" has such a negative connotation anymore ) political domain that is a dot org and with $2 billion being spent on just the 2008 presidential campaign, I am hoping to cash in as politics on the Internet grows dramatically.

Dot us is a natural fit for politics and some candidates are using them, unfortunately just not the headline making ones.

 

[Lasher]

Dot us is a natural fit for politics and some candidates are using them, unfortunately just not the headline making ones.

Ok, in terms of promoting .US NOW we're really onto something. Here's a scenario.

National televised political debate:

Candidate 1: blah blah blah, blah I'm the strongest patriot in the race, blah blah blah.

Candidate 2: Oh really? You aren't even running your campaign on a USA domain.

Candidate 1: Ahhh, ummm, what?



I saw we nominate -DB- for president and let him run with it

 

[domainica]

That’s a very good idea, but perhaps we can go one step further and donate $100.00 each towards establishing a dot US owners association, assuming that there are 500 members that could add up to about 50K, the association then could use some of that money to make a few professionally designed dot US websites and promote them heavily on the national scale in order to bring more attention to dot US domains as a whole, this all could be done in a matter of weeks or you could wait a few more years in the hopes that people might find out about dot US on their own.

Great idea! Count me in.

 

[fonzie_007]

I'm wondering if we could set up an extension of DNOA that would be there for promoting .us domains. Not sure if the powers that be would be up for this, but there is already quite a bit of infrastructe in place for DNOA...

 

[Lasher]

I'm wondering if we could set up an extension of DNOA that would be there for promoting .us domains. Not sure if the powers that be would be up for this, but there is already quite a bit of infrastructe in place for DNOA...

Using .US for email is a good idea too. Mr Duke has the LLL.us of my initials, wonder if he'd be up for a trade for any of my LLLs...

 

[Lasher]

Update: Ron Jackson very kindly agreed to trade me DGP.us for an equivalent "quality letters" domain (SBT.us).

So, my personal email is now [email protected]

A small step, but any time someone sees .US in use it reinforces the extension just a tiny little bit. Particularly with end users who often don't even realize there IS a .us