.COM will always be king if you want to do business in 1st world English speaking countries, and there will always be extensions to domains.
Allow me to share a theory we have after observing domains and sales over the last decade.
Domain extensions are only as popular as the country they serve.
I will say again...COM will always be king if you want to do business in 1st world English speaking countries.
.COM came out of the United States, the internet grew from here. U.S. citizens have been marketed .COM first before any other extension. It then trickled out towards industry that had dealings with the U.S. We have grown up with it, and we know that the best companies own .COM domains. It's just inherent in our learned experience of the internet. There is no need to change it, and in our minds, were okay with that. If there was a true need to change it, then .BIZ and .US would have exploded... but they didn't.
With that said... the rest of the world is now par to the United States with their internet usage. If you noticed, all shopping portals used to have "United States" at the top of its country selection... now we have to scroll all of the way down an Alphabetical list to find our country. The rest of the world has caught up and now demands equal treatment.
Now here is the most important part... if you live elsewhere in the world their version of .COM will be their country codes. Some of our domain friends have been able to acquire generic .COMs that some very large multinational companies based in other countries which should have had their eyes on the .COM, but did not care because they own the most familiar extension where they do business.
Country codes are now getting the respect that they deserve, and recognition that their TARGET MARKET is familiar with.
Now... with that said... new gTLD's.
It's a pyramid scheme, they know it, everyone else knows it, there is no arguing that. If you want to you can, but you are wasting your breath. The whole arrangement reminds me of a 2000's pyramid scheme where they convinced people that there was an actual 'product' they were selling, and by the way it costs millions just to own the rights to resell that product so join now before it's too late!
There are not enough people in the TARGET AUDIENCE for any .whatever extension to work successfully. Keep in mind, most GREAT new gTLD domains make sense verbally and have an exact match keyword phrase. That is the only time when a new gTLD is good, when it makes verbal sense. KimsStable.horse is garbage, thoroughbred.horse is a good new gTLD.
The second question is, are there enough .whatever gTLDs that make sense and are exact matches; NO!
So gTLDs have two problems, the target audiences aren't there and there are a very few that make sense.
.COM, country codes, .whatevers with an exact match, and single keyword .info (sales increase every day).
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