.Co Registry Responds To Overstock.com Announcement, Overstock.com Gives More Details & Releases The O.Co iPad App
The .Co registry just posted it response/thoughts on the Announcement made by Overstock.com yesterday through Adage.com, on its pull back of its re-branding from O.Co.
The blog post entitled “A Blip On the Radar” was authored by Juan Calle the CEO of the registry, is posted on the registries blog.
Part of the post contains statements made by an unidentified representative of Overstock.com who shared some additional thoughts on the announcement and the future of O.co
Also today separately the company, issued a press release announcing the availability of the O.co App for the iPad.
“”Overstock.com President Jonathan Johnson. “Our new O.co iPad App lets customers find great deals on lots of products from the convenience of their iPad. One great feature of the app is that it allows customers to easily share great deals they find with their friends through Facebook and Twitter.”
Here is the full post from the .Co Registry unedited:
Some in the domain industry (read: domainers) are up in arms about the recent announcement by Overstock.com that it would slow down its rebranding to O.co. Given the amount of speculation and commenting going on about this within that community, I felt it was appropriate to reach out to Overstock.com and get a clear picture of what is going. Here you go:
—————–
Why did Overstock.com first begin using O.co?
When Overstock.com started twelve years ago we only sold surplus inventory. However, as our business model has evolved, Overstock.com is no longer just an online liquidator. Because “overstock” implies surplus or liquidation inventory, it no longer accurately reflected who we are today as a company.Our offerings now span from cars to insurance, and include first-run brand name apparel, electronics and home décor. We wanted an identity that more accurately reflects how the company has evolved; hence we embraced O.co to reflect the direction in which we are heading.
Why are you shifting your brand emphasis back to Overstock.com? When does this shift become effective on the website and social media channels?
We have been listening to our customers and have learned that they we’ve moved too quickly in the transition. They are telling us that we’ve done it too fast. So we are going to down shift one gear by re-emphasizing Overstock.com and noting that O.co continues to be a shortcut to our site. Internationally, we will keep using O.co exclusively. O.co will still be promoted through our mobile website and our iPad application. The shift in emphasis began showing up on the website and our social media channels in early November.What had the initial reaction been like from your customers?
Re-branding takes time and we certainly didn’t expect the new name to be adopted overnight. We were pleased with the early customer acceptance of O.co as a shortcut for Overstock.com and thus moved the rebranding efforts to the next gear. Many customers reacted positively, and others expressed that the transition was happening too quickly. What we learned was that we haven’t yet adequately transferred the decade of brand equity we have in Overstock.com. So, we’re down-shifting the re-branding effort in order to leverage and transfer that brand equity.The .CO domain is fairly new and Overstock was taking a big risk as the only company to use the domain as part of its brand. Thoughts?
It is true that Overstock.com was the first online company to use the .CO as part of its brand. This put Overstock.com at the forefront of digital marketing. The decision to use a .CO domain in such a big way underscored our willingness to lead the market and to disrupt the status quo.So when will you become O.co? Is that still on the cards?
We expect that O.co will continue to emerge as our brand over time. It will be a gradual transition, and may take a few years. We didn’t want to risk throwing out the brand equity we’ve built with Overstock.com. Ideally, in time you’ll just see Overstock.com fade away and O.co take its place.What about O.CO Coliseum, will that be re-named as well? Wasn’t it Overstock.com Coliseum to begin with?
We won’t be changing the name. The name will remain “O.co Coliseum”.—————–
There you have it folks. A blip on the radar. As I’ve mentioned in the past, .CO is part of a marathon, not a sprint.
But if you’re a .CO fan and interested in something actually worthy of news, Om Malik, founder of GigaOm just rebranded to .CO. In case you don’t know who Om Malik is, well, he has 1.2 million Twitter followers. To top that off, Kloud.CO was featured on CNN, Quarterly.CO is blowing up in social media, and Founder Institute, the worlds largest pre-seed incubator is now living at FI.CO. Not too shabby!
If you’re interested in seeing more of the latest entrepreneurs and companies building on a .CO domain, check out Opportunity.CO.
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O.OPS
NO ONE could have done a better job of running dotCO than Juan, Lori and company, but Overstock’s spin on this is a crock. These guys simply learned the hard way what most domainers have known for years and they are trying to gloss it over.
More like, “.Co Registry Responds To Rick Schwartz thoughts”
I want Robert Cline to explain this decision to me!
Right of the Crock…
@Alan – “I want Robert Cline to explain this decision to me!”
No!! Please no!!
One must be careful what they ask for nowadays!!
The .CO registry did much of their marketing and promotion around O.co.
Now that the news is not positive it is a “blip on the radar”?
Judging by the complete lack of awareness of the general public, I think .CO is actually the “blip on the radar”.
Brad
.CO for last few months have not been doing any marketing.
I have just seen one auction which showed lower value of .co`s than year ago.
Sedo is doing .co premium auction with NO RESERVE!!! it says all.
When I read requirements for premium domains like this I feel really sad.
The upcoming Premium Generic .CO Auction will include domains fulfilling the following criteria:
The domain is a high value, commercial term, congruent with the .co extension
It is a generic domain, e.g. like auto.co, credit.co or retail.co
The domain is easy to spell and not prone to typographical errors
The domain doesn’t violate any third party rights (e.g. trademark rights)
The ccTLD is .CO
English and Spanish terms will be given preference
This is a no reserve auction.
equipment.co – no reserve, stereo.co – no reserve, alive – no reserve, gear.co – no reserve, lemonade.co etc.
Owners of those domains by putting these domain with no reserve only promote future lower value of .co`s .
The fact that the registry has to respond to it says it all. They’re afraid, and rightfully so.
This o.co thing is a non issue. The way Rick spins it one would be inclined to think it was the ONLY indicator of .co usage. He blows a mighty horn and a lot what he says is spot on but I think he overstated the importance of this by a mile.
@ Christopher Bon
You bought so many .co`s that you do not see clearly.
Give Mr CLINE a sweet kiss. You need each other, particularly at this .co hard time.
The only thing that matters IMO is end user adoption which seems to be steady and strong. Nobody ever said (except R Cline) that it would overtake .com. I think Ricks just doing a happy jig that his domains won’t take a hit in value. Maybe he was afraid of that happening. End user sales are fine. I’ve sold two this week and I have a couple more biting the hooks so I’m not worried. This will definitely affect sales to domainers though and will push prices down. It’s fine with me. Not great for the .co flippers.
@Christopher Bon:
I don’t believe Rick overstated the importance of this. That AdAge article is a bombshell. Overstock has spent a great deal of money branding themselves as dotCO and they would never done this unless there was massive leakage to O.com and branding confusion.
Adam
I don’t think that these domain are at a no reserve auction is the issue.
I see great domains on namejet.com at no reserve all the time.
The owner believes the market will delivery a fair market value.
The issue is what these domains will sell for.
We will see.
@Christopher Bon:
Non-issue? The most vocal user of a .co as a brand just determined it was important enough just before the most lucrative retail time of year to change their brand back to their old one. If there is one thing that could do the most damage to .co, that is it.
Do you really think an entrepreneur about to start a new business and seeing that news would proceed to brand their new company with a .co?
So is .CC the new king?
Cline where are you little buddy? I mentioned that I noticed this change away from O.co on another thread here last week and you said it wasn’t true, .co is stronger than ever, blah, blah.
Cline, will we get a mea .CO-lpa from you?
Hmm, are single letter .co’s still $1.5 million?
.CO is the furby of domain extensions. A fad whose time has come and gone.
@ Mr CastellO
Your last sentence was awkwardly worded so it probably doesn’t read as you intended. I get what you mean, though, and agree somewhat but I still think the importance is overstated.
@Adam
Thanks for your concern but I’m doing fine.
@Christopher
LOL Correct. I am currently fighting a massive hangover.
Note to self: Staying up to 6AM drinking champagne with three women is never a good idea
“The owner believes the market will delivery a fair market value.”
Yeah. They have to have a huge belief particularly after this bad news. I do not think that news encourage potential buyers to pay great money for their .co`s.
Steve
I think the decision to pull back from the re-branding is not as important as the reason.
The statements made by the CEO of the company on the amount of loss of the traffic from O.co to O.com would now have to give caution to any major site thinking about launching on a .Co.
The real issue here is .CO’s success or failure cannot be based on anything to do with how Overstock has been exposed to countless competitors, like, for starters, the saturated coupon market of Groupon, LivingSocial, Weekly Plus and whatever new one comes out every few weeks.
As I mentioned when the o.co stuff first came out months ago – get out, get out, get out , sell you stock in the company – these guys are driving their business into the ground now that the old man is out.
David
“”Staying up to 6AM drinking champagne with three women is never a good idea “”
I always thought that was always a good idea
I’ve never seen an industry where people are so jealous and full of schadenfreude. So many of you are happy to see others fail so you can say “ha! You fool, I told you so!”
Where does that get you?
If I see my brother fail and lose money, do I want to see him dispirited so he falls down depressed and doesn’t want to keep trying? What good does it do if I laugh in his face? What does that say about me and my character?
@MHB
The fact that I’m just getting up now (it’s 5:30pm here in Nashville) would tell you that only the drinking stopped at 6AM
“The statements made by the CEO of the company on the amount of loss of the traffic from O.co to O.com would now have to give caution to any major site thinking about launching on a .Co.”
Excellent, excellent, excellent and say all.
You may make fun of Crazy Mr.Cline,but he has more balls then most of you put together,he has 730 LLL.CO’S where you have nothing.
So,my question at the end of the day for you is,who has better chance in making money, you with zero investment or him with 730 LLL.CO?
I don’t take his side ,most of the time he is talking nonsense but the truth is he is invested and you did not.
David
Even Better
Hate to think you wasted all that Champagne
))::
@Christopher,
“So many of you are happy to see others fail”
no – you could not be more wrong friend – rather than remaining silent – some of us actually feel our words may not fall on deaf ears – and therefore prevent another lost fortune
Mike,
If they said they were losing traffic to O.com but stuck with their O.co rebranding, would it have really been news? We all in the domain industry certainly knew they were losing traffic to the .com and I would bet that a lot of people outside the domain industry could guess that too.
The fact that they’re willing to now spend time, money and effort to shift gears back to the old name right before peak time of the year is what speaks to the magnitude of the issue.
Either way, I’m amazed at the registry’s response. It reminds me of the Black Knight in Monty Python and the Holy Grail saying “it’s just a flesh wound” after he’s had his arms cut off.
@MHB
It was one of those nights when you thank God you’re in this crazy business
I believe the stadium naming deal gave the company the option to switch from Overstock.com to o.co at any time which they exercised. They should negotiated for the option to be able to switch it back as well if and when the whole thing went bust. Doh.
“”If they said they were losing traffic to O.com but stuck with their O.co rebranding, would it have really been news? “”
Not anywhere as bad.
It would show they thought the could overcome it in time and were willing to stick it out.
The fact that they are pulling back is very bad news for those companies that would consider building out what will be highly advertised sites on a .Co.
There are millions of mom and pops that don’t have $25K or $100K or more for a domain and are running a small business and will never have that much traffic to begin with, that are not planning on advertising there site widely, who could use a .Co as a cheaper alternative.
@Christopher
There are some people like that, but some of us are actually trying to keep people FROM failing. I’ve been against .co from the beginning, never bought a single one and have constantly warned people about the very issue that Overstock ran into.
We should all strive to get the domain industry more connected with the mainstream business world. There’s been a huge divide because so many domain investors think about their money first and the success of who they sell their domains to a distant second. Was there money to be made upon the .co launch? Sure – at the expense of the people who will be stuck holding the domains in the end. I’d rather be involved in a chain with a success story at the end.
Not
I do think they have the option to switch the stadium deal back to Overstock.com
@Steve Jones
Spot on.
I wanted to leave comment on cointernet.co blog.
Never had problem with that. Now they have to first check.
its so funny cointernet.co has just removed from their blog people`s comments which I was seeing for last few weeks .
Maybe because they expressed their dissatisfaction.
Sorry but to me its not right.
@ David J Castello: “Note to self: Staying up to 6AM drinking champagne with three women is never a good idea”
You were up with your daughter, your mother, and your wife, drinking to dawn?
What kind of example are you setting for your progeny?
Warren Buffett described “cigar butt” investing as buying shares in a company at a distressed price that had “one puff of smoke left.” This is kind of what happened with .co. The “hype” was used by the registry as “one last puff” on the cigar butt, and all that’s left behind is a worthless TLD, with some folks left holding the bag during the “bust”. These bagholders are looking for a “greater fool” to rescue their investments, but that’s very unlikely to happen. Just remember what happened to .mobi, and other foolish endeavours.
The consumer confusion is completely understandable.
At least an extension like .ME has its own identity without piggybacking on the similarity to .COM
Brad
The fact that a company that spends millions and millions on advertising online and through national television ad spots as well as buying the naming rights to a freakin stadium couldn’t manage to turn this rebranding with a .co into a success should be a cautionary lesson for future such whimsical attempts.
Plus, this is the easiest possible .co name for potential consumers to recall. Just one letter before the .co. Four characters total to process and it seems people were still confusing .com for .co.
.CO registry has done a good job of projecting this new .COol them around the extension. They’ve done everything they could to make it a success, but the problem lies in the fact that the product has serious inherent flaws.
A viable alternative to .com need not look almost like .com. Domainers were intrigued by that aspect but the real world practical implementation of putting a major site on such a name and trying to market it is an uphill battle because of the .com/.co similarity.
George
I think your overstating the news.
What has happened here is that a company that spends millions of dollars on national TV found out too much bled over to .com.
That doesn’t make it a worthless TLD.
I still think it has a place but its place is now limited.
.mobi as we always discuss, was a technology based extension which became unnecessary when technology caught up and passed it in the from of an iphone.
I don’t think other than .Tel .Mobi compares to any other extension.
Would say this is the point where the dam breaks, expect a complete washout in terms of domainer prices.
It’s like getting a woman a Cubic Zirconia engagement ring. She might not notice that it’s not a diamond, at first. The frugal fiance might be pleased with himself at first, at having saved money compared to the “real thing.” Overstock is like the angry bride filing for divorce, and writing in the court papers “He was such a bad husband, even the ring wasn’t real! The marriage was doomed at the start!”
Mike: I agree, the market is very limited. To continue the wedding ring analogy, I think .co domains are appropriate for the “mail order bride” market.
For the “keepers”, get her the real thing! 
George
If you want to do an analogy I think a car is better.
The difference between a Bentley and Chevy I think is more appropriate.
Both can work depending on the proposed use and as I said for millions of mom and pops and and companies that don’t spend a fortune advertising there isn’t going to be much bleed over.
To have bleed over you need the traffic to begin with
@Louise
My Mother’s in Florida, I’m not married and I don’t have a daughter.
And when I finally have a son I hope he’s as fortunate as I’ve been
Actually, I think it’s actually *more* important for the mom and pops to stick with a (long tail) .com, rather than venture into the .co swampland. A big company is more likely to notice the bleed, and can react and change things. A small company can’t react as quickly. They’ll just think their conversion rate is normally lower (by 50% or whatever the bleed rate is), as they don’t have “comparables” or “experts” analyzing things for them.
Small companies who get suckered into a .co will face HIGHER *relative* costs to fix the problem, than a big company. A small company can bleed to death more easily, and can be crippled by a bad decision.
A mom and pop is going to likely use their domain name for e-mail, i.e. use it as a *primary* domain (whereas .co used by the big guys has tended to be as a *secondary* domain, and rarely for important things like email). Most domainers focus on web bleed, whereas e-mail bleed can be more significant (especially if you’re waiting for important documents, bidding on contracts, etc.).
Here’s a “test” whether a TLD is successful — many mainstream companies use it for their primary e-mail (George’s First Law of TLDs, lol, to mock “Beckstrom’s law”). Many, many TLDs fail that test, easily. While a few big companies might buy a throwaway .co for defensive purposes, they’re not going to trust it for their primary email, that’s for sure.