ICANN Opens Flood Gates To New Extensions
ICANN has unimously voted to allow an unlimited amount of new TLD’s, using any combination of letters and numbers, including non-Latin characters.
In CNN article annoucing the decision it states in part:
“”"The decision could spell the end for traditional Web addresses ending .com and .org and country names like .jp or .fr with Web sites able to use easier-to-remember suffixes such as .hotel or .sex.”"”"
Of course the current US adminstration already nixed the .xxx extension.
However this action, combined with a possible democratic administration that would be in place in early 2009, when the first applications are expected to be received, might allow a .sex, .xxx or similar extension to pass.
In addition to adult extensions, it is expected there will be many application for Geo extensions with .paris, .berlin and .nyc already having groups formed to sponsor them.
Right now we are just left with a lot of questions:
Will this as many predict start another “gold rush” to acquire the top domains for each new extension?
How will type in traffic fair if there are hundreds of new choices?
What effect hundreds of new extension all hitting the market in 2009 or 2010 have or the current value of .com’ and other current TLD’s, now and in the future?
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I don’t see values of .com domains dropping before 2009 or 2010. Nobody knows what will happen at that time. I even think after a few new extensions come out, it will still be too early to tell. What will happen in 5 or 10 years? Dot com will always remain king. Anybody with a large company will want a good dot com for their business. You will never be the true “sun” unless you have sun.com. But the demand could go down slightly in the long term.
Andrew
I don’t expect any of the new extensions to actually be in use until early 2010.
.Com will always remain king but the questions are still valid.
Mike,
I think you might be expressing more concern than this merits. Don’t we already have .travel, .pro, .biz, .tv, etc? They haven’t made much of a difference in the dotcom landscape. It’s the hundreds of billions of dollars (if not trillions?) of dollars that have gone into marketing dotcom domains that gives dotcom an irreversible advantage over all other extensions. There will never be that kind of focus in terms of marketing and capital that will be put into any other extension again.
The value of dotCOM will rise. Domains are like real estate and dotCOM is Park Avenue.
When they started building out in Brooklyn, Queens and the Bronx it made real estate worth more on Park Avenue and the same will happen here.
One only has to look at dotUS, dotINFO and dotTRAVEL. They’ve all been out for a while and have had zero impact on dotCOM, dotORG or dotNET. The only exception has been the nationalist marketing popularity of the ccTLDs – and for good reason.
Does .cm mean anything to anyone ?
David,
Do we sound like a broken record yet? The reasons are being repeated because they are good and valid. There is enough precedent from the existing filler extensions to extrapolate that more of them won’t make much of a difference.
Nice analogy with Park Ave.
Some good points here for sure. David – your analogy with Park Avenue is probably dead on.
One that is missing is when you have more relevant extensions. Assume for a minute in 5 years there is a .Linux, .Developer, .Personal, .Business, .Tax, .JavaScript, .Manu(facturer) and 500 other extensions.
Now, I can see where many people would say – wait – I can have Andrew.Tax for $7 instead of AndrewTaxInc.com for $500. Over time people could become more desensitized to .com being king and can slip a little bit. When you have hundreds if not thousands of extensions, there is now an extension that probably matches you and your website perfectly. A golfer? Get Colorado.Golf. A manufacturer? Acme.Manu
Overall maybe David is right and .com prices will only go up. But a little bit of demand will be taken away from .com in all of this if trillions of domains become available to the world. Probably many will be free. I can only see .myspace giving free domains to their users.
I propose that these news TLDs be known as vTLDs (Vanity TLDs).
I propose that these new TLDs be known as vTLDs (Vanity TLDs).
Andrew,
What good will those trillions of new domains be if no one will ever visit them. They will all be cluttered up amongst each other. Own the dotcom, and your customers come to you. You can save a couple of thousand on not having to buy the dotcom, but you will have to pay google or some other marketing channel, thousands A YEAR to get people to your site. This is a no brainer.
This is going to be a trademark nightmare. Companies trying to protect their brands in the new extensions, aswell as companies fighting over the actaul new tlds.
Tony – I agree completely. Type in traffic from .com is irreplaceable and free. As I said in my first post “Dot com will always remain king.” It’s what is branded as the Internet. Permanently. I was merely playing devils advocate a little with my points / questions.
Cory – you are absolutely right on the TM issues.
This will be another california gold rush but without the gold. Only ICANN and the registrars will make out like bandits. I will feel bad for the general public who will think they are getting great new names for so cheap.
The other beneficiary indirectly will be the stubborn dotcom domainers who might gain from the chicken-littles who will be running from their dotcom’s thinking this will only dilute their assets.
Some of my 3 word dotcoms get more type-in traffic than some of my 1 word dotnets. And how long has dotnet been around? It takes time and an incredible amount of capital to ingrain an extension into the public’s collective mind. It will only be that much more difficult to do when the new TLDs get unleashed by the dozens if not by the hundreds at a time.
In a sea of new and confusing TLDs, the public will cling to the familiar dotcom.
Think that I and many others are digital immigrants, I wonder what the digital generation makes of any extension ?
Tend to think that Google.com Yahoo.com Baidu.com FaceBook.com plus + country codes will now be part of the cultural linguistics, Have to ask my grandson not my small circle of domain registrants
When they add Blackjack to the Casino here in Florida, the Casino will be full but Vegas will be fuller. That’s because a strong brand is not about a name or logo or extension, its about the experience that surrounds it.
The best brands already say everything those extensions say. You go to AOL, Yahoo, iTunes, Facebook, PalmSprings and they don’t even have to mention dotCOM for you to add it.
And sub-domains will help anyone reach any person or destination within a brand/domain with common sense applied. Jobs.ibm.com; kidsdepartment.bloomingdales.com; weddingregister.crateandbarrel.com etc
If you are going to GEO Expo in Chicago or Traffic in NY, the GEO owners can sublet traffic.newyork.com and geoexpo.chicago.com and leverage the GEO Owner’s local exposure to attract the best prospects in those cities who need no hotel nor would know these shows even exist let alone to type-in traffic.travel.
They can offer pages to the thousands of other conventions and events that drive the economies of those cities. And they and ONLY they can do it because their brand becomes a way to extend another.
All it takes is a redirect- not much development. Your first closed sale will be the example to attract the next. And on.
That’s the only untapped potential in extensions that really matters.
MTV has already engrained these navigation habits in tomorrow’s leaders.
And Apple’s ME.com is about to take that equity to the bank in a way no new extension or start-up can because of the relationships and interfaces that reach out to shoppers on their desktops, and remove the browsing from buying.
Like iTunes or NetFlicks, the most direct navigation involves no extension at all. Think of how you got here or to the last ten sites you visited today. Chances are bookmarks, brand preferences, email alerts, portal sites, rss feeds, and peer links lead you from one place to another.
Then it’s up to the value offered by the site to bring you back.
But even if type-ins are extinct and navigation becomes automatic by voice or touch, the strongest argument for dot COM is the role it plays off line.
To help keep that value that keeps visitors loyal, you top of mind and to differentiate for competitive advantage, advertising is key.
I’m not talking about SuperBowl campaigns. I’m talking about all the interactions with your brand that shape its perception.
When you don’t have to say music and you don’t have to say dot com, or you don’t have to say desert vacation and dot com when you can say iTunes, or Palm Springs and say it all- suddenly three line Google ads, T-shirts, Logos within stadium camera view, business cards, email signatures, comments on forums and blogs, link exchanges, tradeshow signage, local ads, license plates, email display addresses, even invoices, — work a lot harder.
So greatplacestovisit.travel may get traffic from exposure on engines, blogs and feeds, but when the salesman calls to sell an ad to the big car rental company: “I’m from PalmSprings.com” will carry more weight.
Time to stop debating what extensions are worth and domains are worth and look at all the unmined gold in the marketing and application of the assets we already own.
Let’s ask ourselves this simple question: would any of us buy airfare tickets from a place like – oh let me make something up – bestfares.travel? I think the answer is a no, and we say this even without the benefit of the doubt that it could be a perfectly legit operation.
Same will be true for most of these vTLDs, the trust and branding is simply not there based on our past experiences and conditioning.
I can only see some like .nyc and .city having some local appeal. That and a limited SEO benefits if one of the keywords is the extension itself.
Owen Frager does it for me, Good Post
Good comments. In general it seems .com values increase. Waterfront real estate does not decline when new suburbs in outlying areas pop up. Rather, the opposite happens. As Frank said, “adding more skim milk does not stop the cream (.com) from rising to the top”. Another benefit to having 1000s more extensions is undercutting the argument that Company X is/was “denied its domain”. With far more supply, Company X in Memphis could register its name in .memphis (etc.) so its coveteous pursuit of the .com would be laid more bare than it currently is now.
.net will suffer. I think it has already fallen very far since there are plenty of alternatives. To me .net means I couldn’t get the .com
.com is in the consumer’s head and it will stay there so geo .com names will be fine but something like resorts.com just might loose value.
Imagine you are disney. Sure you’d like to own Resorts.com but for how many millions? Why not just start .disney and create resorts.disney and market the hell out of it.
They no longer need Resorts.com.
Same for Laptops.com. HP can just create .hp and build on laptops.hp.
So, I may be completely wrong but very expensive category killer generics just might have less demand if companies decide to do theirown.extension.
Time for a dose of reality.
Michael IMO you are spot on to fully reserve judgment on what this will mean in 5 years, unlike others who blindly make assumptions that their current business models will no way be effected.
Some of these niche TLD’s will present viable alternatives to dot com. PPC will fall. The way search is done will change.
A new generation will be raised on a web with many “TLD channels” that will be used for various purposes.
Development will be the great equalizer. Content will carry the day.
Owning a .com domain will give you a strategic advantage if you develop and provide quality content. The days of sitting back and getting high on the hog will be few and far between without hard work.
Change happens. Things evolve. Just because .com was branded early on, in 10 years will not mean it will always be the end all be all. We are already seeing examples of many powerful online businesses that are successful without owning the .com With new TLD’s this will be even more so.
Not saying .com is not going to valuable. It has and will continue to have a huge strategic advantage but to just assume this will have zero ramifications (or positive ones) on the current dynamics that are on the web is naive IMO.
Watching comments on this blog is akin to asking Broadcast TV execs 30 years ago if cable TV will effect their dynamics bottom line in any way and them saying “no, all the noise of additional channels will drive more traffic to broadcast TV. We started with 3 major networks and the public only trusts these networks”. Then Cable execs saying “The net will not pose a challenge to their viewing habits, cable will remain strong and not be affected by TV moving to the net”.
Same thing will happen with TLD’s. You can look at .com, like old school NBC and ABC. It did not go anywhere when cable became big but now has to work leaner and meaner to get half as much of the pie. A few decades ago 40 million viewers for a show was major hit TV show. Now everything is so splintered 20 million is a monster hit.
Dot COM is prime to do well IF IT IS DEVELOPED PROPERLY. It can no longer afford to stay static with PPC links and think it will be king forever. The young kids coming up today already are having alternatives branded into the brains. People want dynamic content.
So this issue is not black or white. Those who claim to know for sure, are just trying to protect their current brands. We do not know for sure how things will play out.
Those that do not develop will get left behind. Those that have developed .com’s will have to work harder and spend more to make half as less long term. They will still be able to make money, but those that think this will help there business will be in for a rude awaking in a few years.
Guys
Sorry had some other matters to attend to today and see I missed a lot of good conversation.
Lets say there are just 10 new extensions (although I think there will be over 100) and lets say the 10 are:
.sex
.nyc
.paris
.lawyers
.doctors
.movies
.realestate
.store
.news
.sports
First of all throw out all recent TLD’s.
There has never been a time that more than 1 was released within 6 months of another, now there will be 50-250 within the same calendar year.
This has never happened before so no passed events can be used to judge what will happen when all these extensions get released within a short time of each other.
Second. you have to throw out .travel.
That extension was doomed because they restricted the domain to travel agents and those who could prove they ran a travel agency.
All of the other newer extensions, info .biz .pro, all to general.
Other than .travel (as discussed above) there has never been a domain released for a particular topic.
Releasing 100 of them basically at once will cause people to think differently about direct navigation.
You want to find an adult site you type in something ending in .sex, a business in New york type in .nyc; your looking for a lawyer, type in .lawyers; a house type in .realestate and so on.
Having one new extension cannot get people to rethink direct navigation the way having all the topic domains released at one time will.
Now here is my simple point.
Having 100 bang on extensions, broken up by topic, is not going to increase the number of visitors directly navigating to your .com, unless your .com is the same as the extension, like sex.com.
How much the traffic will peal off from the .com to the new extension is an unknown as this point. It may be 5% it maybe 50%. Traffic to the .com is not going to go up.
So my point is no good can come from this for large .com holders from a direct navigation, perspective.
Traffic is going to go down either somewhat or a lot.
There is no win here. Just a matter of how big the loss will be.
As far as the value of domains go, once again I do not think you can look back at any previous extension releases.
Right now if your a criminal lawyer in new york you have one choice of great domain name, newyorkcriminallawyer.com
If the is a .nyc and .lawyer extension, then that lawyer can use, criminallawyer.nyc, or newyorkcriminal.lawyer.
All of these new extensions expand the possiblities.
Now will .com still be king?
Yes, .com will still be the strongest of all extensions.
Does that mean however it will still have the same popularity as it does today, probably not.
So I don’t see how this can help .com owners.
A lot of bad can happen and not much good.
There have been a lot of kings in the history of the world.
Some have enjoyed long reigns and some very short.
Being king does not assure you that you suffer no dilution in your power.
The are many other factors that will determine the eventual success of the new extensions.
Here are just 2:
How will the top domains for each extension get awarded? First in line, randomly or held by the registry for auction to the highest bidder.
How many of the top domains for the extension actually get into the hands of end users who will build out sites around them and how many will wind back in hands of domainers, parked?
No one knows of course and that is why any of us can offer just a good guess.
Our guess this is a bad day for domain holders.
How bad we won’t know for at least a couple of years.
Michael I agree with your assessment 1000%
Again, we need to look at real estate for a comparison.
In South Florida, real estate values are getting hammered. Going off a cliff. However, there is one area where they have actually gone up in value: Palm Beach.
Palm Beach has always contained some of the most valuable real estate in South Florida. And through thick and thin there has always be a demand for it.
The high value generic dotComs will most likely come out ahead after the dust settles. There will always be a demand for them and they will always be considered the Rolls Royce of domain names. A major enduser will always pay the price to capture the International branding a major dotCom can deliver because a vTLD ending in Lawyers or Doctors is ONLY effective to market in English speaking countries.
Hope all the .com pessimists sell their .com names like in 2001 and 2002.
I’d say it will have very little effect initially. It might eat some direct navigation traffic at first, but when folks realize that 99% domains are either parked or ghost towns they will mostly revert back to .com’s.
Just imagine how many will be registered and sat on simply as “defensive domains”. If you get enough of those then the extensions get killed. Mostly parked? Same deal.
Here’s another twist. What about all these kinds of domains?
golf.colorado
colorado.golf
Now you got to buy out DOUBLE the domains if you are trying to capture a market, which also means traffic will be even more fractured in the hundreds, or thousands of new extensions.
These new extensions will be like the ones we already have. I think they will serve a purpose in direct marketing, temporary domains, ,mom and pops, etc…… but don’t expect surfers showing up too much in terms of direct navigation – at least for 20 + years. Just look at how long it took just to get to this freakin’ spot we are at !
David
The comparision to real estate is not applicable.
Here’s why.
One of the most used phrases to describe the value of waterfront real estate is “there’s only so much and there not going to make any more”
Well they just made more.
Lets say when you woke up tomorrow all of a sudden there was another 200 miles of Florida coast line.
Would the value of existing Florida waterfront property go up or down?
Johnny
As I said some direct navigation will go to the new extensions.
How much is up for debate but whatever the new extensions pick up will be at the expense of the existing extensions.
So my point is however you slice it, the domains we owned last week were more valuable than they are today.
Michael:
I promise you that by 2010 you’ll see the prime real estate comparison for mega generic dotComs is applicable.
Beachfront property in Martin County is not the same and never will be considered the same as Palm Beach County. The International branding power of dotCom cannot be superceded by these Vanity TLDs.
For those of us who grew up on ABC, NBC, CBS and PBS, we now readily accept CNN, FOX, HSN, HBO and the dozens of others. It took some time for these channels to become engrained in our heads, but eventually they did. To the kids who were born after the advent of cable (and who have cable), they are all just channels to chose from, no one more special than the other.
Dot.Com is king for now. Looking longer term, however, it will be diluted over time, just like the major TV networks. As new generations of kids hit the internet, .COM will eventually be just another “extension to a web address.”
Television networks earn their eyeballs by what they deliver to the viewing public, not by their name or their tenure on this planet. So, too, will websites. If aspen.colorado has great content and gives people what they are looking for, while Aspen.com continues to do nothing, where do you think users will end up? If PalmSprings.tv creates a better value proposition to advertisers (more traffic, better website) than PalmSprings.com, where do you think advertisers will flock to.
David Castello, take note: The dot.com name alone will not be enough. Once upon a time, IBM thought their good name was enough to be the leader and defacto standard in the personal computer world.
With all the new choices of web addresses, type-in traffic will probably decline. As time goes on, search engines will continue to improve and yield better results, thereby allowing the surfing public an easier way to navigate amongst the billions of web addresses to find what they are looking for and weeding out the garbage pages that offer no value (regardless of their TLD).
Put this all together, and look long-term.
The winners will be internet users who just want what they are looking for. The winners will be companies who need a web presence and now have a range of domain name choices to acquire, from premium names to more affordable names. The winners will be the website publishers who provide valuable content that EARN eyeballs.
The Losers will be domain name owners who refuse to change their business models and who own assets that offer no value to the surfing public.
Let’s look past our individual interests as domain owners and look at the larger picture. This is nothing more than the natural evolution of the internet. It’s a good thing.
Glad you raised the network issue because it’s a great example of why dot COM will matter more.
Today there is a new network- TIVO. You could care less what the times and addresses are because content comes to you– without the annoying ads.
In the very near future your pc or mobile will become a gateway to any and every type of content, on your terms and schedule. You won’t be tuned into Fox waiting for 8PM and American Idol.
You’ll type American Idol in your browser and watch it whenever you want, interacting in a variety of ways and sharing the experience.
American Idol won’t have to compete in a time slot, or split revenue with syndication because it will live forever on its dot COM plot.
It won’t even care about networks or advertisers because it will generate more income selling itself and its music and concerts and just about anything else. Not to mention a lifetime piece of everything it creates.
And that’s why after years of living without it, of being foxbroadcasting/entertainment/americanidol.com, they bellied up to the bar and acquired americanidol.com.
Same with todayshow, ac360 and more.
But the difference is that the production company owns it not the network.
Just like breaking PPC dependency on Yahoo, it’s a whole new world when you can sell American Idol on AmericanIdol.com rather then send the opportunity you created to iTunes where they could be distracted and spend money on something else instead.
They own their future. And that’s what dot COM is about.
Ellen can’t reap the benefits of having built her brand on ellen.com.
But the next Ellen could buy a domain Morisa.com and build a billion dollar franchise around a cyber-smart invented persona.
This is the domain opportunity as producers and talent cut the intermediaries and go “direct to domain.”
Imagine the potential when a movie can open on a domain and be accessed by everyone in the world– projected on their Plasmas with a near-real theatre experience?
Batman’s $600 million opening is a lot sweeter when the studio isn’t taking 1/3, the theatre a 1/3, prints and shipping and posters, and the captive audience has $20-50 found money in their pocket to spend on the site because they aren’t needing it for babysitters, popcorn, parking and gas. Or buying 10 tickets when the whole family and friends can enjoy it for less then the price of one.
Navigation may change so that you won’t need an address- but you’ll always need a home. For email, for annual reports, press inquiries, job applicants, partners and as comfort for those who need to associate a face with a name.
bestfares.travel can’t provide that comfort. And neither would most of the biggest generic sales have commanded those prices, without the benefit of association with the brands that bought them.
To shareholders- bank america makes a huge statement when they are loans.com. Just the way CBS will benefit from news and tv (.com) in a way CNET never could.
In the end, it’s not about what comes after the dot, but before it that counts.
David
First of all the “mega generic” .com like your palmsprings.com are not going to lose value.
But honestly what percentage of domains in most of our portfolios fall into this category?
What about the 99% of the other domains we own.
Good .com’s not “mega generic” domains?
I do not think the value of the Vanity TLD’s as you call them will “supercede” the value of .com’s
But I do think they will take a certain amount of traffic away from .com’s further reducing PPC earnings and take away some value from them.
Certainly the value of our present holding did not increase by ICANN move today.
Rob
I disagree with your statement
“COM will eventually be just another “extension to a web address.””
I don’t think .com is ever going just to be another extension, just like NBC is not just another station.
Michael:
I tend to agree with your last comment.
The large developed dotComs will continue to grow and prosper. Parked names may find themselves in somewhat crowded waters.
David
Those are the waters that 99% of all present domains swim in.
No way to really predict the effects but the main thing is not to get blind sided…build great sites NOW and all others will be playing catch-up for years. Just dont take ANY competition for granted, like Yahoo did with google
Rob great points.
David Castello, you are missing the point.
Nobody is saying .com is not valuable or will not continue to be the best of the TLD’s as Admin points out correctly.
However, your analogy about Virtual Real Estate is flawed.
In the real world, what is “beachfront Property” is clearly defined and finite. In the virtual world it is in constant flux. Trends change. Search will change. Viewing habits change and now ways to reach the public are changing. I
What is considered “beachfront today” is not guaranteed forever. The virtual world is governed by different standards then the real world. If .realestate takes off and is marketed nationally by agents, then guess what. Now this is “beachfront porperty” for this very valuable nice that suddently erodes the value of .com real estate related domains. This is business 101. .
If .nyc is used and developed and branded by the city of new york and it takes off. Then suddenly that is “Beachfront Property” Content, development, real world marketing and branding is what will carry the day.
We are in the infancy of the net. Most people still fail to see how early it really is. This narrow minded thinking astounds me. Yes I know many of you are looking out for your investments. I understand that, but Michael Berkins is too. He is just be realistic about it.
In the Virtual world “Beachfront property can move right next store and suddenly appear. THIS CAN NOT HAPPEN IN THE REAL WORLD.
Once again .com is not going anywhere but guess what, more viable alternatives are moving in. THIS IS FACT.
Can anyone say .google or .goog ? Imagine direct search navigation into the browser. Imagine a world where .com stops getting branded becasue at the end of the day it has always been about corporate identity. That is why madison avenue has never bought into buying up key .com generics. Now they have more Ammo.I can go to shop.walmart to find my products. There the “com” is irrelevant.
Corporations spend millions for 30 seconds of air time on traditional TV. You think they will not shift away from .com to brand there own corporate identity?
You think others will not embrace .city?
Once again what is considered beachfront property in the virtual world is not finite but not in the virtual world. The rules of the game are changing.
Many of you sound like broken records “.com is king .com is king” You choose to ignore history. You choose to bury your heads in the sand. Many of you are old and out of touch living high on the hog in your cushy .com bubble all these years. There will come a time when links on a homepage do not cut it anymore and that time is coming fast.
I propose a new term “Domainers in Denial”
Michael Berkins thank you for having the courage to stand up and be the voice of reason. Nothing is guaranteed.
To the .com pioneers out there. I admire you and look forward to meeting many of you in person one day. As pioneers, I implore you to keep thinking outside the box and do not fall in the trap that many throughout history have done.
Stay nimble, EVOLVE. if you fail to, many of you will still be a millionaires, but future generations in your family will pay the price. You will have to work harder for less, but in the end if you do the work, it will pay off. If you dig your heels in and have an elitist attitude that you are bulletproof, you will suffer the fate many before you in history have.
Look at this as a wake up call and take on the challenges this new internet will provide. Many of you have your head in the sand so you fail to do this.
The rules of the Virtual world are far different then the real world.
Michael:
You are right – NBC is “not just another station. Part of it can be due to the NBC brand name. But most of the credit is due to the fact that NBC has historically provided better content than the compettion (Today Show, NBC News, Meet the Press, Must See Thursdays, etc.). If they start producing garbage, theywill be just another station. Their brand can only do so much – they need to deliver on their brand promise,or they lose.
In regards to .COM domains, the other 99% of the domains you refer to can also have a great future as successful websites or profitable businesses. Just like NBC, these .COM domain names need to deliver on their brand promise and produce great content that is better than the comptition.
While this may not be possible for large portfolio domain owners who can’t possibly develop all their domains, it does level out the playing field in the big picture.
Going back to the television analogy, there will soon no longer the big three networks (.com, .net, .org). Cable television is coming with lots of channels, so the big three can’t rest on their good name alone any longer. They better start producing a great product, or or their value will diminish.
Brian
I think we got 18 months before these TLD’s are launched, allocated and in use.
As they say in the NFL Draft ,We are “all on the clock”
“I think we got 18 months before these TLD’s are launched, allocated and in use.
As they say in the NFL Draft ,We are “all on the clock”
Well said!
That’s a case in point. Hollywood Florida is like the new extensions. It means nothing in the consumers mind. Going to a local casino for a few hours (as I did for the first time last week) is not the same as going to Vegas. Once you’ve been to Vegas, going to the Hard Rock in Hollywood only reconfirms why Vegas (the dot COM brand) is king.
In Vegas Wynn can open a second Casino and 1000s more rooms within feet from his existing Casino and so too Venetian opens Palazzo doubling the existing capacity. Is it a threat or a benefit to all the Casinos around it?
Actually it’s a benefit because the Wynn and Venetian will market worldwide and bring conventions to town- thousands of people who will wander off property and drop money in places that would never attract this traffic on their own.
Why? Because like dot COM Wynn, Venetian and Vegas are brands that stand for something bigger.
National Broadcasters convention in Vegas is a no-brainer but try moving feeding and housing that kind of volume in Hollywood.
More importantly, on expense accounts without family or job obligations and the fear of neighbors and friends catching you having too much fun, the attraction is not the Casino but the experience that surrounds it. A unique experience that can’t be duplicated anywhere at any price.
In fact Vegas is the classic real estate comparison to domains and evolution. When Steve Wynn bought and imploded the Desert Inn hotel and casino for land to build his greatest casino yet– the major shift with this new resort was the concept of designing from the “inside out.”
That’s what we need to do with domain thinking. Desert Inn and others like it on the same soil that thrives today, was parking and lacking the capacity to enable the big traffic. It could never realize its potential in the former state nor without the airport expansion and carrier consolidation to make it compelling to the Asian market.
Did you know that 4 out of 5 of Vegas high rollers come from Asia?
But the former owners of the Sands and Desert Inn never would imagine that. Like domains/ppc/traffic mentality they thought you get a big headline name like “Sinatra” and you’ll fill the seats to their capacity. That was the business plan.
Those properties generated xx per square foot. They may have sold for 10 times revenue. But what does that mean when you look at what stands on the same square footage today.
Take PPC away, traffic away and you still have the dot COM land.
Look for the Steve Wynn and it will only take one of your names to cash out your investment beyond anything you ever wished for.
Owen
Let me ask you this.
If there were 5,000 people at the Hard Rock tonight, and tomorrow 10 more casinos opened up within a mile from its doors, would there be more or less people at the Hard Rock the next day?
Great response by David J Castello.
The $$ value of the .com’s will increase as new domain exten. become available.
ICANN wants more money so they will approve any domain ext. as long as they get their $$.
By letting new domain ext. entering the web they also let other domain name investors to enter the market.
I say bring it on.
Owen,
Not sure what you are saying? Please elaborate?
Corporations have the money and power to brand there own corporate identity’s online.
If you are saying the .com land that PPC is currently built on, will still be valuable when the PPC dries up, I agree 100% but it needs to be developed and being a “.com alone will not be enough.
The development will need to meet or beat other sites out there to be assured top market share. This will be new the new economics of the net in the future
But as Michael Berkins points out? We are all on the clock.
Damir
I think if you read all of David’s posts carefully he is talking about the top 2% of .com domains.
Premium “Mega Generic” .com’s
I agree with David that these are at little risk for devaluation from the new TLD’s in the next 5 years.
However, its the other 98% of .com domains that I am talking about.
After all how many domains do you own like PalmSprings.com?
…haha, THEY are all FIGHTING for that “.com” domain.
No.
Actually, they are “one-by-one”…using common sense to develop *the only other viable alternative…
One at a time…
AlabamaPolitics.TV
ConnecticutPolitics.TV
FloridaPolitics.TV
IndianaPolitics.TV
MassachusettsPolitics.TV
MichiganPolitics.TV
NewMexicoPolitics.TV
NewYorkPolitics.TV
OhioPolitics.TV
RhodeIslandPolitics.TV
TexasPolitics.TV
VirginiaPolitics.TV
UsaPolitics.TV
Sorry for ruining the day.
FACTS ARE FACTS.
NY
Admin,
Why are we in the minority in thinking that this can old be bad for .com?
Brian
I really have no idea.
When there is a major event that takes place it is either going to be bad or be good. It is rarely of no consequence.
I see no way that this is good for .com names.
Therefore it can only hurt.
The issue that can be debated is how much it will hurt and when will it start hurting.
I have no idea of how it can seen to be a positive.
I think domainers are putting to much emphasis on past performance of new extensions.
The are comforted in their failure to make in roads on .com.
However this situation is completely different.
All of us are heavily invested in the space and if you believe what we do, you just had a very bad day.
ICANN’s decision seems to come out of nowhere and seemed to move from consideration to passage in less than 72 hours. A lot for anyone to digest in such a short time frame.
Plus never in our history have corporations and cities and organizations been given the keys to the TLD car.
I think people are glossing over just how huge this is.
They have been looking for a way to screw us via reverse domain hijacking for years.
Now they have other means to not have to play by the old landowners rules.
They have a license to brand and create as much land as want.
Land they are sure to brand and develope with millions of dollars. Branded EVERYWHERE.
This is not .jobs .travel and .anythingelse that we have ever seen!
There are two fronts, .com on one side and the rest on the other. .Com are the HOLDERS of fortune and the rest are TAKERS of fortune. The TAKERS will swarm like piranhas and get a piece which means the HOLDERS will make less….not nothing….but less…..
So far, most of the opinions have taken the position that there will some order to this and the vTLDs will mostly be professional like dotDoctors and dotLawyers, and the public will intutitively flock to them because they “make sense.”
Not quite.
Today, ICANN didn’t just open the door, they blew it off the hinges. ANYONE with enough money can buy a vTLD as long as ICANN has no objection to it.
In other words, Mr Smith can buy dotMissy for his 16 year old daughter and her high school friends if he can pony up the money.
The public will be hit a tsunami that will overwhelm them. And they will do what they always do when they are hit with too much information and they can’t remember a URL – go for the obvious.
Brian: Yes, dotCom is the ultimate cyber beachfront property. Why? Because it’s not just another gTLD. DotCom is also the name of a pop generation revolution that is forever branded in the public’s consciousness. And if you want to know how much that’s worth just ask the owner of one these vTLDs next year when he can’t get anyone to remember it after he’s burned through a million dollars promoting it.
My advice to everyone parking names is to pick your 5 best domains, learn Dreamweaver and develop them like crazy. If someone as technically deficient as I could learn basic web site development in 30 days in 1997 – anyone can. It’s your best insurance for the future.