.us Why hasn't .US lived up to expectations?

[dsiomtw]

Back when registration of .US names was initially offered to the general public, Harris Interactive did a poll and they found that "as many as 68 million Americans would choose .US if given a choice between the two Internet naming conventions." (the other being .com). So what happened? Clearly people are not registering and using .US names the way the poll indicated they would. If one was to just look at Neustar's site you'd think the whole thing was dead - their last press release was over 2 1/2 years ago, etc. etc. I'm trying to put all the pieces together and decide once and for all how I feel about investing in .US names for the future ...

On a related note, what is the best way to go about negotiating the purchase of .US names? I'm not much of a negotiator, but I need to learn. I'm thinking of buying a few premium names that the owner's have indicated they are willing to sell. They all just say "make an offer". These are premium names that would sell for low to mid xxx,xxx if they were .coms. I'm looking at all the past sales of .US names I can find, etc. but I'm having a hard time trying to figure out what the fair market value of these names are.

 

[zouzas]

.us

took .com some 10-15 years to achieve its stardom and you "expect" .us to achieve it in 2-3 years????

.US is simply in one word

Yahoo.licio.US :yell:


the intergration of del.icio.us by yahoo and of these web 2.0 are uninhibted by the .com on the brain mentality , they adopt alerantive extensions for uniqueness.


for 05 year in review for .US visit www.Mister.us

 

[CrazyTech]

It seems the reason you feel .US is not successful is because that poll was overwhelmingly positive towards it, and it hasn't lived up to the prediction. If you are going to use that poll as the main measuring stick, then of course you will be disappointed. Casual online polls are not always accurate. If they were, we wouldn't need to bother with official elections for politicians, sports teams wouldn't need to play each other, Ashley Simpson would not be allowed to make another record etc. etc. etc.

Exactly -db-, that's what I was trying to get at in my post a poll is just that - a poll. It's not the end all and be all for the factors I mention. You've always got to consider the question in every poll. This poll informed the person being polled about the .us extension that they probably didn't know exist like the majority of America today.

Polls have also proven themselves to be off often. During the last election all we heard about were polls and in many, many cases these polls were completely off from the actual vote.

 

[dsiomtw]

First of all, in regards to equity78, I apologize to everyone else - I shouldn't have sunk to his level and even responded to his comments at all.

As far as my reference to the Harris poll and some of my other comments that some people find to be "argumentative", don't get me wrong ... I was only trying to spark some discussion. As I mentioned I have recently regged over 250 US names, and I'm in the process of buying some others, so I'm not down on .US at all. I'm pro .US all the way, I'm just trying to decide how much to invest in it i.e. a little or a lot.

People above have tried to have an intelligent conversation / discussion with and have tried to give you help and guidance, all you have done is been offensive and argumentative for the sake of being argumentative IMO.

auntystatic, I'm sorry you feel that way, but I don't agree. Yes I was unprofessional in response to one other person who started the unprofessional comments in the first place. I shouldn't have done that. As far as being argumentative, I have only stated my opinion that several comments by others have been pretty illogical, and I stated why I thought that. That is what discussion is all about.

Some have posted but the others are too busy prospecting for dot us domains because in watching the market (including published and unpublished sales along with inquiries from buyers) they know what is happening. Sharing too much knowledge of a thriving name space drives up acquisition costs.

Absolutely, that's why I was trying to stimulate some discussion. Maybe I was trying a little too hard LOL.

Having said that I'm not really sure how, at this point in time, one can mine over a couple of hundred of these worthwhile names in just one day like the thread starter noted above.

Well, as you probably know there are lots of decent unregged names left. With a little insight, a few custom scripts, etc. etc. it was very easy to register about 250 names the other day. I spent a few days working at it here and there creating the scripts to check Overture, check availability, etc. etc. but it wasn't that difficult. I would give you some examples of what I regged, but I'm not done yet. I'm not saying I regged any fabulous names but there is a pattern to what I'm doing, and if US continues to gain popularity the names should be worth at least a grand each in a few years. I'm just getting started - I plan on regging at least 1000 names and buying some premiums.

took .com some 10-15 years to achieve its stardom and you "expect" .us to achieve it in 2-3 years????

.US is simply in one word

Yahoo.licio.US

the intergration of del.icio.us by yahoo and of these web 2.0 are uninhibted by the .com on the brain mentality , they adopt alerantive extensions for uniqueness.

I guess I will have to be careful hear so you don't take this the wrong way, but you are making some pretty broad statements here. For one, you can not compare the time it look .com to take off, because 10 years ago people had no idea what the Internet would become. Now that the Internet is so mainstream and most people realize it will be a part of the rest of their lives, more and more so as each day passes, I would expect the cycle for most new extensions to speed up compared to .coms.

As far as Yahoo buying del.icio.us, they didn't buy the domain - they bought the underlying business/service. The name could have been del.icious.zz and it wouldn't have mattered to them. Yes I agree the fact that they said they will leave it alone and not assimilate it into Yahoo or change it to delicious.com or whatever is a good thing. But I wouldn't go so far as to say that Yahoo is adopting alternative extensions for uniqueness because in this case the domain or extension was irrelevant.

One thing I can say for sure is that there definitely are a lot of domainers who are high on US names ... some of their asking prices are out of this world crazy LOL

 

[Ray]

IMO its bceause of all the other CCTLDS.. it seems to be growing quite fast lately

 

[Carlton]

The web's growth is drawing in a wider and wider circle of internet users and by extension is raising public awareness of tld's like .US. The web is becoming such a natural part of people's personal and business lives. I believe the next few years will show a more purposeful use of domain extensions as everyone tries to find the most effective means of locating what they want. There is inherent logic and purpose built into the meaning of each domain space.

That unique meaning has not been tapped that well yet, but it will since we now have trillions of web pages and billions of internet users trying to navigate an ocean of information. The complexity of the web is awesome. Consequently, singular descriptive domains (combined with the meaning in their extension) will gain greater significance as a navigational tool. This will occur in conjunction with SE's ... and completely independent from them as well.

 

[wot]

Duplicated post

 

[dsiomtw]

Consequently, singular descriptive domains (combined with the meaning in their extension) will gain greater significance as a navigational tool.

I agree 100% with what you said. I'm curious about your reference to singular descriptive domains though ... are you suggesting these are better than plural or other domains? It seems like more often than not the plural version of a popular search term is more common than the singluar, oftentimes by a huge margin. Take the common search term "job listings" for example. It has 10 times more references in Google than "job listing". Are you saying you'd rather own joblisting.com than joblistings.com? Or am I misunderstanding what you said?

 

[Carlton]

I agree 100% with what you said. I'm curious about your reference to singular descriptive domains though ... are you suggesting these are better than plural or other domains? It seems like more often than not the plural version of a popular search term is more common than the singluar, oftentimes by a huge margin. Take the common search term "job listings" for example. It has 10 times more references in Google than "job listing". Are you saying you'd rather own joblisting.com than joblistings.com? Or am I misunderstanding what you said?

I agree, the plural is preferrable. I misspoke somewhat.

 

[mole]

I'm trying to put all the pieces together and decide once and for all how I feel about investing in .US names for the future ...

Its a very small risk compared to the kind of acquisition costs on the .COM namespace for similar keywords. Not worth sweating over, just do it. :imho:

The web's growth is drawing in a wider and wider circle of internet users and by extension is raising public awareness of tld's like .US. The web is becoming such a natural part of people's personal and business lives. I believe the next few years will show a more purposeful use of domain extensions as everyone tries to find the most effective means of locating what they want. There is inherent logic and purpose built into the meaning of each domain space.

That unique meaning has not been tapped that well yet, but it will since we now have trillions of web pages and billions of internet users trying to navigate an ocean of information. The complexity of the web is awesome. Consequently, singular descriptive domains (combined with the meaning in their extension) will gain greater significance as a navigational tool. This will occur in conjunction with SE's ... and completely independent from them as well.

Good post, ton!