ICANN Vote is Today
2008 June 26
ICANN is expected to vote to approve a proposal which will open the flood gates creating an almost unlimited amount of domain extensions.
Pricing seems to be set between $100K-$500K for each new extension.
Any extension that get more than one proposal will wind up being auctioned off the the highest paying registry.
This has already stired talk of some seven figures prices that will be paid for extensions like .sex or .xxx
There is a ton of press coverage on this and here two interesting articles:
Abc News asks is .sex is the new .com
WIll the new extenstion hurt the value of Marchex, Demand Media and Domain Holders (quoting Frank)
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Frank’s quote is right on the money.
Furthermore, to quickly re-educate the population takes either (A) a pop revolution or (B) a long time to accomplish.
We’ve already had A.
Bring ‘em on.
In an ocean of new extensions, the flagship .com will continue to easily sail above the fray.
ps Congrats to ICANN, who finally came up with a way to profit from their own “land rush.”
pps First dibs on .domain and .domains.
Are we still wondering why so many major domainers own Adult domains?
Ed
As one of those guys, adult domains made money before there was ever a PPC ad or a parking company.
My guess is they will long after as well.
Agree 100%.
there are a lot of reasons why “investing” in a brandable, memorable, .com domain is a good investment even at 500k or more like we have seen in the past.
this move by ICANN will definitely not topple the .com extension, it will just belittle some of those arguments made in the past for spending big bucks on a single domain. This might put a ceiling price on domains for some future endusers.
Why should a forward thinking company spend 10 Million on one .com when they can own the entire extension for 1/100th of the price
hotel.com for $10 million
or
Tokyo.hotel
NewYork.hotel
Paris.hotel
London.hotel
LA.hotel
.
.
. for only $100K
ofcourse many people know only the .com, but they will be dead soon….
come on how hard is it to rememeber paris.hotel ???
not hard at all, and because of that the costs of branding it would not be as much as some would think.
ofcourse i used “hotel” just as an example, for pure domain valuation discussion only not taking into account the buisness value. hotel.com is already an established online brand so its not comparable.
any extension is just a brand, and we know brand value is only a perception. A domain = name+extension = shortcut to a destination
whereas you can’t take away water from real waterfront realestate, perceptions can change
.com has established brand but it doesn’t mean other trusted brands can’t co-exist.
With the introduction of new extensions the monopoly of type -in trafic is slowly shrinking for .com , and maybe that is one perceived threat that people are afraid of.
business models relying on just mousetraps and type in traffic are going to get squeezed. If you provide value then ofcourse you have nothing to worry about no matter what extension you are on and how many other extensions there are.
James
Good post.
I agree with you.
The new extensions will be right on point and specific enough to gain some traffic, how much is anyone guess but whatever the new extensions gain it will be to the loss of the traffic to .com’s
Great post and interesting response by james.bond and Steve M.