The Digital Marketing & gTLS Strategy Congress conference kicked off today with Frank Schilling of Unregistry, laying out how he see the future of the domain name space and its the new gTLD program.
Mr. Schilling was being interviewed on stage by Kevin Murphy of Domainincite.com
As always Mr. Schilling had some interesting observations and bold predictions:
Big brands placed their internet presence on .com as it meant commerce smaller brands and companies followed them into .com
Now we are going to see the same thing to the right of the dot , as big brands leads the way with smaller brands and other companies to follow leading to tens of thousands of new gTLD.
Its a certainty.
It won’t change overnight, but over time, its an evolution like we saw with .com.
“Its more of a marathon then a sprint.”
“This is 1998 all over again as if think of the .com”
“More brands will come to own their new gTLD’s”
As those TLD’s get marketed and utilized you will see type in traffic to those new gTLD’s,
“.Com will become like AM radio”
Because the power of marketing brands bring. you will see brands like BMW advertise domains like Drive.BWM 745.BMW
As far as comparing the launch of previous new TLD to what is coming with the new gTLD’s is like comparing putting out a fire using the water from an eye dropper with dumping a plane load of water on a wire.
So if yo have a fire and you use water from an eye dropper to try to put out the fire, some people will say “see water doesn’t put out fire” so like’s like saying the new gTLD won’t work because .mobi and .aero didn’t work, but of course you need a lot of water to put out a fire and that’s what the new gTLD’s that are coming are big planes of water.
Mr. Schilling also predicted that Brands will windup using some new gTLD as in-house social networks.
Brands are paying Twitter and Facebook to get their customers to go to Twitter and Facebook and follow their Brand, which doesn’t make sense to me. The problem is as we sit today, very few brands have the technology, the wherewith all to create a social network to send the customers to and engage with them and get the traffic back.
Now brands can own their new gTLD string and use them to interact with their customers.
Instead of advertising with Twitter and Facebook and sending their customers to those sites only to engage with their own customers, they can use the money to market their own TLD, build the the traffic to a string or site they control and keep the traffic in house.
As far as a prediction Frank said:
“.Com will still be the strongest TLD in the domain space but in 20 years, all the new gTLD’s will equal or exceed the number of .Com domain names.”
You can watch a video of Frank discuss his thoughts and vision for the new gTLD program here
“.Com will become like AM radio” lol
I feel like Frank is turning into these
tv sales men selling crap products.
Frank is getting too much sun and needs to cool down.
Imagine you own a loan company
without owning the dot com and
your customers type dot com
into browser or email !! you could lose very valuable customers!!
20 years prediction? Sorry this prediction is NEVER going to have the same results as Ricks.
I predict in 3-5 years Frank will be the poster boy who believed in the tsunami of gTLDs spam.
“.Com will still be the strongest TLD in the domain space but in 20 years, all the new gTLD’s will equal or exceed the number of .Com domain names.”
That is a pretty safe prediction to make. Let’s say there are 10000 new gTLDs in 20 years and there is some modest .com expansion then the average new gTLDs should only need to have about 20000 registrations for this statement to be true.
If that doesn’t happen then new gTLDs would be a complete disaster.
.COM doesn’t seem like AM radio to me, even in 20 years by this measure.
no, 99% of new TLDs will fail and will not even indexed by SE like old TLDs, then .com domains will remain the number 1 forever and their value will grow much more
millions of users can’t kill all the .com sites just to allow to Mr. Schilling to make more money with the new TLDs
Interesting insights, but having worked in AM Radio, I can assure you the analogy is not completely fair. AM radio became the bastard stepshild to FM, save for news and talk stations. I just don’t see that happening with .com.
As for the social media stream, companies that don’t want to spend thousands of dollars on Google Adsense are much more satisfied driving traffic to Facebook or Twitter so clients and customers have that BRAND NAME in their face, and can then associate it with a product. It is very much like the traditional marketing that has, until very recently, been the only type of marketing available. It works by promoting a company name, followed by an explanation of what the company makes or the services it provides.
Generic domains, as we know, made it possible to define the product or service first, then using that channel, the customer learns about the company smart enough to own the domain on which a sale will be consummated. The web literally flipped the script on it all.
Of course, Madison Avenue is STILL trying to figure it all out.
Meanwhile, the rollout of dozens, hundreds or thousands of new gTLDs is still likely to cause issues for companies unless they get the .com to accompany their gTLD. Imagine, at least for the next several years, people continually having to ask, was that “widget.com” or “widget.info” or “widget.donuts” or “widget.widget” or what?
Search will ameliorate some of the confusion by simply providing lazier users a list of options, and depending on the SEO trend of the day, some .coms will not rank as well as .whatevers, but the ephemeral nature of SEO means the final stability, long term, of the web will rest with a solid domain name. It is not likely .com will be supplanted by any gTLD any time soon.
Spot on, totally agree with Frank.
The point is that .com is currently losing the market share by single digit a year. So if the trends continues, Frank may be very right in 20 years. http://we.shall.see./
That can already be done with a .COM domain name.
Above quote could be written like that :
I never understood why companies were using Twitter and Facebook to move their own website traffic to third parties (Twitter and Facebook) who make tons of money on their back.
All it takes is an IT company writing software to build a social network on any domain name.
New gltds bring nothing more here in terms of interacting with your customers.
@Danny Pryor:
uh yeah, gee… couldn’t possibly imagine having to double check the address and make sure its correct..
next your gonna tell me i need to double check my math, grocery list, or phone number that im dialing to make sure all that is accurate.
was that pre-washed spinach in the bag, regular spinach, baby spinach, or what… golly im so confused.
by the way, “madison avenue” in this context is a seriously outdated phrase and i cringe everytime i hear a domainer mention it. one of the lamest domainer sound bites out there.
“its an evolution like we saw with .com” Back then the com was part of the technical evolution with few alternatives. Fortune 500 companies made the “com” a brand, an exclusive club brand. New gTLD strings “great” the more the better, the auction houses that are Google – FB – Twiter (sorry did I need to include the com) are now taking reservations for box seats (space) to be auctioned subject to availability. The rest of the globes future mass markets; India – China view the CC’s with national pride. You will always get DeLorean’s, black tulip bulbs & “insider trading” usually from a tax domicile.
I stumbled across a site which shows the number of registered domains in each extension by month going back to 2004. There has been a consistent increase in the number of registrations of .COM, .Net and .Org over that time. .COM started 2004 with about 26 million registrations and is now over 110 million and growing. It would seem at this point that many new .COM registrations in English would have to be multi-hyphenated or at least three words or numbers or incomplete words added. While many have said .Net would fall off a cliff with the new GTLDs, .Net still sees consistent growth in regs. It has grown from 4.3 million registrations in early 2004 to over 15 million currently and growing monthly. On the other hand .Info registrations have been falling at a rapid clip throughout 2012 and 2013 from a peak of about 8.2 million to about 6.2 million currently.
sounds like a snake oil salesman.
lets visit this post 2..3..5 years from now and see what really happened.
Yep, it’s 6 years on an I’m revisiting, so far the predictions are a load of crap. Most off it has gone in the opposite direction with ntlds seeing no growth in years.
Well, Frank is clearly talking his book and that is only understandable.
He and his company made a huge bet on the new TLDs and now he is pushing to get a return on his investment. I am sure he knows just too good that the new TLDs will have to fight a major uphill battle against .com. Every dollar spend on marketing these new TLDs is a dollar less in your pockets. I am quite sure that 80-90% of all the new TLDs will just fail and the companies will go out of business. It will affect the prices paid for domains in the secondary market. No doubt about that. But it wont affect the meaning of .com domains for the Internet as such. Little projects that bought in the aftermarket will be thankful for the alternatives and that money will move out of the secondary market into registrations. But the big brands will stick to .com.
“For me, today’s snapshot of currency pecking order rhymes with the domain World. . COM is the gold standard. Universally accepted and used. Close behind are CC TLD’s; issued and minted by the Country you live in. There are regionally vibrant alternative TLDs like .net, .org, .TV .biz, .me and .co. – some of which are CCTld’s, well marketed and visually appealing as gTLD alternatives. I liken this bunch to currencies accepted in certain instances – like Yen would be accepted in Hong Kong and Korea or Canadian Dollars would be accepted in the northern US states, close to the border.”
May, 2012
http://domainnamesales DOT COM/sevenmile/2012-05/in-new-gtlds-the-only-certainty-is-change/#content
Suddenly everything has changed.
The catalyst: “something that doesn’e even exist”
“.Com will become like AM radio”
be sure you use the above quote (and source) when negotiating with DOT COM domain holders and brokers…
i misssed where he said ‘in 20 years’…is this really an achievement? that in 20 years all the gtld registration will (in his opinion) match the level of .com registration? if it even happens it will be due to nothing being available in .com, not that .whatever is preferred over .com.
as for the am/fm comparison, it doesn’t really work. there was quite a large technological advancement in radio with fm allowing for much higher quality audio to sent over the airwaves. with gtlds, the domains work the very same as any other extension. there is no technological advancements or differences besides what the letters after the dot are. had fm radio offered nothing more than new fancy call letters there would of not been the move from am.
whether its an achievement or not is irrelevant – the end result will be a mixture of lots of .COM domains and lots of funny looking “island.vacations” type of domains.
2 words with a dot in the middle… its so web 8.0 it makes people mad..
India http://www.nextbigwhat.com/housing-domain-297/
Seriously no one seems to be thinking about how the new GTLD’s are going to make Google’s job of creating accurate (not gamed) search results. They’re having a hard enough time now, how’s it going to shake out with thousands of new extensions.
Google search the following terms:
“mortgage quote”. Position #3, BrainyQuote.com. A website with quotes from famous people and authors.
“online banks” Position #1, PCMagazine article from 2011. Position #3, Kiplinger article from 2010.
They’re having a hard time enough with good search results without throwing thousands of new strings into the mix. So yes, maybe big brands will have the ability to do something with 745.bmw, but maybe not. Because why should that rank above 745bmw.Cars?
Or Cars.com/bmw/745 (which is in position #1)
BMW’s own site is in position #7. So Frank’s hypothesis is that Google search algo is going to all of the sudden want to push everyone to a corporate site or place higher value on it. Or an exact match URL. That’s funny, because Matt Cutts said that they don’t think EMD’s are that important.
When’s the last time you saw a .Co or a .Me ranking in the first page of Google for anything really competitive.
So what’s Google’s best option? Allow the extensions they acquire to rank. Well that won’t sit well with the FTC and DOJ..
So for Google its two steps forward, three steps back and then we’re back to where we started.
So I think in five years we’re going to be in the same spot, .Com is king. 10% of new strings will be alive and they’ll be relying on paid search to get anywhere.
I am sure he will do well with Uniregistry as a business with a P&L. And everybody loves analogies.
But just a reality thing. You can’t compare this one to the start of .com. Yes big brands can afford to buy a tld and operate it. But small businesses and normal people can’t and will never be able to afford to follow suit and buy a tld. Even if they get 90% cheaper in 20 years.
.com regular folks could afford to do. .com used to be $100, now it’s $8+
If a tld goes down to just $10k a year more people will buy them but won’t be Millions of tlds registered.
When it comes to the internet cheap always wins, then free beats cheap. Ok maybe sometimes expensive wins but not at this price gap.
I don’t think we can say lots of people will register 2nd level domains in all sorts og things and it will matter just because big brands will buy 1st level domains.
Big brands buyung 1st level and everyone else registering 2nd level are two different things.
I do think if normal people could buy 1st level domains like big brands then that would make .com like AM radio.
Ouch! .com’s are still selling well right now in the aftermrket, but you do have to wonder if someone will pay $5000 for a domain vs regging a decent .whatever once the new gtlds get out and get known. Either way, it should start getting interesting next year.
The truth is nobody really knows how it will play out. I think some things will surprise us and others will be as we expect.
I can see top brands like BMW, Coca Cola, and Ebay using their own .bmw, .coke and .ebay in advertising because people will have a good chance of remembering the extensions of top brands, especially if they have an interest in the products and like the company.
Small and medium size businesses using gtlds like .shop, .games, and .toys will have trouble in a crowded internet space with people trying to recall their domain name. Right now and for coming years the average person first thinks of .com, and .net .org and their country code also easily come to mind. How are they going to process hundreds of gtlds, or remember an obscure gtld when they hear it in a radio ad, or briefly see it on tv? How much mis-directed web traffic is going to occur from confused people?
A similar example might be real estate agents and what they do ‘left of the dot’. If I’m looking to buy a house in Springfield and need a website to check properties, then I’d easily remember a domain like SpringfieldHomes.com or SpringfieldRealEstate.com. But many realtors use their own name for their real estate website – if I’m flipping through a real estate magazine, I’m never going to easily recall their website especially if they don’t have an easy name like JoeSmith.com or BillWhite.com.
The advice I’m going to give myself and offer other small time domainer’s like myself is, be prepared to drop up to 90% of all existing domains that have no proven track record or previous offers, keep whatever you feel is the strongest of strong, and use what you save on renewal fees to spend on sunrise registrations when the new GTLD’s come into play next year. With thousands of new extensions appearing over the next few years, there’s a frightening possibility that a lot of us will lose a lot of money if we don’t look to re-positioning ourselves once this tsunami hits. I don’t mean to scaremonger, but unless your portfolio is nothing short of amazing, your domains will either be overlooked or undervalued. Saying that 99% of new GTLD’s will fail is just wishful thinking. Every business that forks out close to $200,000 is going to make sure their extension doesn’t fail. Sure, some won’t mean much to the general public at large and therefore be uninvestable, but hoping it will all just go away a couple of years down the line is in my opinion, not going to happen. Up to now the domain industry has been fueled by supply and demand, demand always outstripping supply, well, not for long. And for most of us, we’ll be far down the food chain when it comes to grabbing the jewels in each new GLTD’s crown. Here’s hoping the new registration fees will still remain low, aka .com’s.
> > > > “.Com will become like AM radio”
Worst analogy ever. Seriously. Awful. Will all the new gTLDs be broadcast in stereo? Will you need 2 monitors and special glasses to view them? Will the clarity of the pixels be far sharper in comparison to old “AM radio” .COMs? Will there be a new line of high-end computer equipment so you can get the most out of the new gTLDs viewing experience? And like uber-expensive speakers, will some people not hear (or in this case) see the difference?
Terrible. Seriously, was that analogy thought up on the plane ride over, and written on the back of an airline napkin? I guess if you are desperate to sell something, you’ll just grasp at the most off-the-wall and seriously simplistic idea you can, to try and sell it. Meanwhile, all the big corps and the vast majority of the most popular websites out there will continue to use old-fashioned “AM radio”. Seems to have worked more than well enough so far.
dont be so grim and stop dissecting everything as if you have more time on your hands than i do..
i think he probably just means when AM radio was introduced, you heard about it all the time… in fact it was ALL you heard about. now not as much..but its still there.
also, yes the new gTLD’s are broadcast in a new improved format. one that drops that clunky, EXTRA “.com” thing at the end of the domain name.
@ontheinterweb
If FM radio wouldn’t have been such a huge audio improvement over AM, in other words, if it was mono and it’s audio wasn’t any clearer, it would just be redundant, and most people would probably just stick to the standard AM band that they know.
But it’s good that “you think he *probably* means” something… it’s good to be optimistic.
>>>”also, yes the new gTLD’s are broadcast in a new improved format.”
*Snicker*
well, its pretty obvious which is more readable, more clear:
travel.guide
travelguide.com
sure, we’ll just continue to string words together and throw .com at the end when theres 1,000 choices…. sure.
Given the choice, I’d prefer to own travelguide.com about a million times more than travel.guide. Why? Because I’d have to repeatedly explain to the confused masses out there that .guide is the extension of the name, whereas with .COM I don’t have to explain a thing. People already know and expect domains to end with .COM.
What people are very familiar with is good. What will cause confusion, is, to put it nicely, incredibly incredibly bad. Sure, you can patiently teach them about your shiny hip new extension, if you so dearly want to be in the teaching profession. But why, if you don’t have to?
gee, people have never been confused.
and any idea people have been confused about at first never made it….. right? here is what you’re going to see a lot of at first to make people understand they’re website addresses:
http://www.tour.guide
there you go.. people will be surprised, confused, then theyll try visiting one and no longer be as confused. people are already doing this without the “WWW” dontcha know?
look at the top comment of this youtube video… before gTLD’s are even out… this is the TOP comment ahahhahaa:
3dprintman…the average domainer will be throwing money down the toilet regging new gtld domains. they aren’t going to be big overnight (my bet is never) but regardless of how you very it, buying new gtld domains to resell will be a very long term investment. not something you will recoup any time soon. i’m still waiting for my first offer for my landrush .mobi’s.
Excellent points, Sean. That’s an important factor that a lot of people don’t seem to be paying much attention to: how is Google going to treat these new gTLD’s? My guess is not very well.
3DPrintman: “be prepared to drop up to 90% of all existing domains that have no proven track record or previous offers, keep whatever you feel is the strongest of strong, and use what you save on renewal fees to spend on sunrise registrations when the new GTLD’s come into play next year. ”
Emotion is the worst investment partner imaginable.
In the next few years we will hear a lot of things like this. I expect this post is real, but most will be phoney, trying to create a panic of “missing out”. People will be on here saying how they mortgaged their house to invest in new gTLDs. and how many millions they made. Fake large dollar sales will out number real ones.
Many of the best gTLDs will be private. Those that are open will want to reserve all the good names to sell retail. The next tier will be auctioned. So you are not going to get golf.club or cheese.pizza for reg fee. What you will get will be well picked over before you get close to it.
.Mobi domains have lost 95% of their Landrush value, and the ONLY reason is loss of investor confidence. Emotion. Landrush is a risky time to buy domains for investment.
In advertising if you have a product that is notably BETTER than the existing you focus on how you are better. If you are about the same then you invent something.
“The only toothpaste with Whiteall”
“The only gas with Tecron”
….and then say it so often and so loudly people get used to hearing it. (.XYZ?) It is going to get very loud around here.
Lots of comments and opinions, no one sure what to do, people talking about selling 90% of their .coms, barely a peep on another post about a .com auction with no bids, weird analogies to radio frequencies…
On top of that I think Google is going to have a tough time indexing all these new domains and they will have to put in some sort of value on what’s right of the dot.
Cue the SEO’ers and speculators again, and cue the direct navigation squatters as more people on more mobile devices simply key in domains instead of using search boxes.
So Frank was right… it’s like 1998 all over again.
Robb
“”The truth is nobody really knows how it will play out.””
I think I have been saying that for over 3 years
This is how it will play out. ICANN and select registrars will make a lot of money. A number of other very well-funded entities who invest in the gTLDs should also do well. Well enough, anyway, given the competition they will face with the long-established websites that have been on the Internet for well over a decade now. Then there will be the rest, the masses, those starry-eyed individuals whose hopes and dreams will never have a chance of coming true.
A new crop of gTLDs does not make it “1998” again. (1998? I started in 1996, and others started earlier, but okay, let’s just go with ’98.) We’re coming on 2014, SIXTEEN full years after 1998. Sixteen years of .COM dominance, with a smaller number of other very select extensions like .ORG and .NET in the mind of the average Internet surfer.
This will be nothing but a huge hype-filled money-grab. One last chance for ICANN and those in control of the gTLDs to cash in big. And once the smoke has cleared, the mature sequoias with their tough fire-resistant bark will be left standing, while the young saplings will be blackened and dead. (I don’t need to clarify which one is .COM.)
“20 years” is way too long to think ahead, anyway, when it has been claimed that the gTLDs will finally “equal or exceed the number of .Com domain names.” It’s been 16 years since “1998”. If this statement would have been said about .COM back then, we’d still have to wait 4 more years to go before we could say, “See, I told you so.” But people have had great success and been making money off of .COM for a very long long time now.
Anyway… it’s been said before. [dot]Scam. Plain and simple. Now excuse me while I go invest heavily in .INFO.
“It’s the same as it ever was” it is all about the brand !! Think the USPTO will help pay off the national debt ! Good to read all the comments , Thanks.
@3Dprintman
1. If your domains suck then you should drop them now, not wait for the new gTLDs
2. Do you know what you are going to able to register in new gTLDs after ICANN reserves hundreds of domains, after trademark owners take most of the good keywords and after the registries acting as domainers and keeping all the good domains for themselves (to sell retail like .xxx does)? Nothing! The domains left will be 10 times worse that the ones you currently have. If you think you are going to buy hotels.london for $10 then you have another thing coming…
3. “Every business that forks out close to $200,000 is going to make sure their extension doesn’t fail.”
First of all they didn’t fork out $200k. They forked out close to a million and they will have to pay a lot of money each year just to keep each new gTLD running. Second and most important. Check out all the businesses that go bankrupt every day. They “made sure” their business didn’t fail! Of course .bmw will not “fail” because it has BMW funding the extension as a marketing expense. But I am
not so sure about .xyz. The number of failed new gTLDs will not be close to 99% but some are certainly going to fail.
Online Domains
Looking at your reply to @3Dprintman
1. If your domains suck then you should drop them now, not wait for the new gTLDs
agreed
2. Do you know what you are going to able to register in new gTLDs after ICANN reserves hundreds of domains, after trademark owners take most of the good keywords and after the registries acting as domainers and keeping all the good domains for themselves (to sell retail like .xxx does)? Nothing!
There is no doubt that many of the registries will hold back the best domains as premiums
However that doesn’t mean just because you won’t be able to registrar.
think .me
A lot of the best domains we not available for $10 but they were made available in auction for a few thousands each.
So meet.me for $6K was a great investment as was move.me which was even less and sold for a great returns as did buy.me which sold for $150K.
So just because you might not get a new gTLD domain for $10 spending a few hundred or thousand on one of them might be one of the best investments you will make and may sell for a lot more than a longer, less brandable .com
lol
@Grim…
its interesting the depth of conversation has progressed. now you say “well, 20 years is a long time and you can make money with .com now”
making statements like this dont stop time. it doesnt make you anymore correct because it didnt “happen faster” or you can “make money now instead of worrying about it”
none of that stuff stops time from moving ahead.
why not walk and chew gum? michael berkens seems to have lots of .COM’s but is still watching how the situation unfolds with what seems like an open mind.
whats happening here are people are talking about the future and occasionally some guy comes in the room stomping their feet and beating their chest BUT I WANT RECOGNITION FOR RIGHT NOW!!!!!!
everyone recognizes your “right now” but time still moves forward. walk and chew gum…and bounce a basketball.
@ontheinterweb
You make less and less sense with each post. In any event, I’ll skip the drivel, and refer to where you say, “Michael Berkens seems to have lots of .COM’s but is still watching…” That’s fine. I’ve never said he or anyone else couldn’t do that. But my feelings on the matter are clear. It’s just that you don’t seem to like or agree with them. So go crazy, and buy all the gTLDs you like. Show me how wrong I am. The registrars definitely need your money, so be a sport, and help them out. I’ve got better places to put my money than on some second-rate pipe dream.
haha – we’re talking about the future and some of you guys are constantly creating strawman arguments like “go crazy and buy as many gTLD as you want”
when was i saying that?
and the always great “yeah, but you can just use .com right now and and not be confusing”
thats really fantastic but we’re talking about the future with a flood (not a .mobi trickle) of new TLD’s.
stating whats happening right now or that it will “take a long time” or that “some registries will lose money” is largely irrelevant to the end result.
“like AM radio” AM radio is covered up with spanish language stations owned by large Mexican corporations and some English talk, sports and news.
I guess the Mexicans will get all the dot com’s. and the rest will be talk,sports and news. Not such a bad place to be.
Frank is a huckster. Look at his investment in the new tld’s and you will get the motivation.
opinion is not truth especially from a man deeply vested and attached to the success of his gtld enterprise.
folk, it’s written all .mobi 2.0 everywhere, oh, and .tel was FM because it prposed tech advancements but where is it now?
Mike is Frank sticking to something he said awhile back, that Uniregistry would not auction their names, and no one would be able to register all the good ones as each person could only register so many. He was saying everyone would have a chance to get a few decent names if they were interested when the extension opened up.
I just don’t understand this whole process.
They could just be releasing 3-4 a year and let them flourish.
Are they not running the risk of ruining good extensions which otherwise could flourish? Are they going to damage extensions like .me which have done so well?
Michael, meet.me was a great investment but what about the other domains that were bought for thousands that have not sold and probably never will for any large amount? fact is, yes a few good names will make big money but the majority will not. just like any extension including .com.
as for all this future talk…heck domain names might not even be necessary at all in 20 years. think about that. either way, i am not worried about these new gtld’s. i will not be purchasing a single one and after a few if the big brands try their hand at promoting them with disappointing results, i expect them to just be another tld ghetto like so many others full of seo spammers and fraudsters. and if i am wrong, more power to those who banked off it but i still don’t think .com sales will suffer much if at all.
Everyone has a point, and so here’s mine…Oy vey
True all sectors advance. 8 track to cassette to CD to mp3 etc., in evolution.
Some advance but never change like TV is still a TV although 20 yrs from now might be holoprojection or some similar, who knows, but so far its still a TV for decades. Though a computer may always be a computer and internet itself changes for too many reasons I doubt in our lifetime. You still need one goto location such as dot com. It is a language and the universal goto language most accepted and taught worldwide is English far as I know. The most accepted language extension is dot com. Will there not be a goto extension in the future? Sorry, I dont see that.
Exception: I believe the answer will always be the one who spends the most in marketing can get the world to do anything. PERIOD.
Conversely, imo, look at any extension that is considered a failure to domainers. If they are still around they are making money, so left of the dot will make most any right of the dot survive in and of itself.
Many profited huge on defense registrations to buy the net org etc., (great marketing btw) The rest are huge profits, mostly hyped up, and funded by support of the domainer investors/speculators for without them, I believe those extensions might not have shown how much potential profit there is and we would not see such a barrage of extensions come out and continue to milk the market.
The fact that they do and many more coming out means profit but the market is getting diluted. If they had real value it would be more accepted in world as a usable and desirable extension(s) already. As such many more of those URL’s would be developed by end users by now since the price in other extensions are historically a fraction of dot com lends to my position that dot com will remain radio FMm although I respect Frank’s opinion and position and agee that there is money to be made given the reason above.
Oh, and by the by, there are approximately 28 million businesses in the U.S. and I forgot…how many domains are already registered again in extensions and/or developed? If argument is made that half businesses dont have sites yet, then thats probably making my case for me and others ones presumably that will not buy a domain more than $1,000, (thats mom and pops) and if that is your investment strategy then you should know that. That said “Bring on the extensions, there’s no supply and huge demand!” lol food for thought.
@Alan Dodd
releasing 3-4 a year would do nothing for awareness which is the first hurdle to overcome – gTLD’s need to be normalized first.
you aint getting awareness/normalization with 3-4 TLD’s being released at once… it requires a flood of hundreds.
so this is where people start saying “well with that many there is no way any ONE registry can thrive.”
what im saying is: who cares, because the first hurdle, and WHY people DONT use gTLD’s today is they’re seen as weird, 2nd class.
Len
but also since 2004 .me which didn’t exist has 800K registrations, .co which didn’t exist now have 1.6 million registrations.
.xxx which has done far from well, still have 106K registrations.
some cother cTLD’s have grown as well and of course the total number of domains have increased as well to over 252 million as of the last report
cmac
We are positive on the total investment on all the .me domains I/we acquired having sold meet.me and move.me
We get weekly offers for date.me, and love.me and several a month for marry.me, text.me, friends.me etc, so those domains could be sold but our asking prices are in the six figures.
So as for .me the investment was terrific
For .xxx the investment is at the moment looking horrible.
However we did learn a big lesson which is its the registry operator which is an important as the string in determining how successful the string will be.
So when I was asked today which new extensions I thought would be the most successful I responded I need to see which applicants are going to get the extensions like .web, .music .app, etc etc. without knowing the operator of the registry you can’t predict the success of the extension.
Lesson learned, expensive lesson and being as you can see very opened and transparent
@Sean Sullivan
“Seriously no one seems to be thinking about how the new GTLD’s are going to make Google’s job of creating accurate (not gamed) search results. They’re having a hard enough time now, how’s it going to shake out with thousands of new extensions.”
Exactly, currently there is no algorithm that can handle the wicked confusion coming this way and when it comes to Matt Cutts statements they are as vague as the come, Google says one thing and does another
eg: the ‘generic tretament” or non-treatment for that matter of: .info .mobi .tv etc etc…?
At times it seems Matt has 2 mouths…
Another aspect that nobody has touched is the other side of the coin is the “USER” perspective,
the one thing that immediately comes to my mind is the book “Don’t Make Me Think” by usability expert Steve Krug.
Was it:
hotel.booking or
booking.hotel or
booking.hotels or
hotels.booking
hotel.bookme and on and on…
the typos will be of biblical proportions…
In times of uncertainty and confusion regular everyday people do “a flight to safety” have you checked the price of Gold lately…?
People will run to “what they know” “what it works” “what they trust ” whether is :
.com .de .com.br etc etc and that my friend Frank is the… “Gold Standard” , 1998? uh?
for you it might as well be 1849…Shovels and picks., Iam sure you will do good managing the registries “who cares how many domains are sold or not” but…
I think this time you actually ‘put your foot in your mouth’ by calling DOT COM domains on to become like AM Radio…
I have 500 Fortune COMpanies backing me …
Who is afraid of 500 .mobi like extensions coming this way?
No this guy.
Respectfully.
Robert Fernandez/Domo Sapiens
I never bothered with any other tld’s since wasting a bunch of money with .mobi. for the .me the only names worth anything are ones that work with “me”. I guess the same will apply to most of the new gtld’s with the exception of ones like .web. Anyways, how many of of this list have actually sold for more since?
http://www.thedomains.com/2010/11/18/sedo-me-domain-auction-nets-400k-in-sales-here-are-the-results/
ans what about all the poor fools who got stuck with uber expensive mobi’s.. $40,000 for dating.mobi..ouch. so many big money loses that will never be re-couped there. xxx was a joke too, once again, greedy registry basically killed the extension and of course frank spent over 1 mil on those. will he ever see returns from it? seems unlikely.
with so many gtlds coming out at once, it seems registrations will be so spread amongst them it will be hard for the registries to make a profit. their only hope it selling domains for big money in auctions…from my perspective anyways.
Just love all the comments. Obv MB touched some nerves here and there’s some strong opinions and one thing that’s different is that there’s lots of experience this time around (since 1996) to make this a good read.
Best thread of the year award?
ontheinterweb wrote:
>>> you aint getting awareness/normalization with 3-4
>>> TLD’s being released at once… it requires a flood of
>>> hundreds.
A flood isn’t generally considered a positive event. And from a product viewpoint, things that are rare have value. Those that aren’t, don’t. Every Christmas season there is a standout toy many parents try to buy for their kids… even though the store is filled with tons of other toys. That’s what the gTLDs are. The ‘other toys’.
>>> WHY people DONT use gTLD’s today is they’re seen
>>> as weird, 2nd class.
Second class is being generous. But yes, you have it right, they will be seen as weird, and most average surfers of the web will be confused by them.
so is Frank is stuck with his premium .xxx he invested millions? now that would be interesting to see how right his vision was, ’cause it that’s a failure – his following words are just an MLM rhetoric.
@accent
“.Mobi domains have lost 95% of their Landrush value, and the ONLY reason is loss of investor confidence. ”
Is a wrong statement. .mobi was a total scam from day one. It was a bet by icann that most people are idiots and will believe there is a need for going to a website on a cell phone. Anyone with 2 cents of tech savvy knows you can display anything you want to the user based on their browser, OS, screen size, IP GEO location and other factors. This means any website CAN know if user is on a mobile phone.
The more I think about it, new gTLDS resemble .mobi more every day. Why? Because there is no need for them. The only reason is for the gTLD owner to make money on the emotion of investors thinking a new .com is born.
The new tld come and go, the same gets played over and over again with failure and now we will get thousands of failures. Simple! Franks analogy with using an eye dropper to put out a fire is wrong. A better analogy would be like ants trying to move a boulder. With all these new gTLDs will be like having thousands or millions, heck, billions of ants trying to move a boulder. It doesn’t matter how many ants you use, the major corporations are NEVER going to drop the .com as long as URLs exist. Google will never prefer g.search or even .search if they allowed it over google.com.
There is a bigger chance that URLs will disappear and search engines together with FB and twitter will replace the need for address bar.
“its 1998 all over again”
Except that Google wasn’t even around in 1998
RE: “There is a bigger chance that URLs will disappear and search engines together with FB and twitter will replace the need for address bar.”
heh… you know thats WAY WAY more unlikely than gTLD’s actually catching on… so google is going to disappear and be replaced with the facebook search engine.
okie dokie.
oh, i read that wrong.
so google will still be around… but everyone will be using facebook for their web address and back to IP addresses..no domain names.
except, now with thousands of them you really think theyre just gonna disappear – when theyre just now starting to expand?
Michael –
RE: your statement:
“However we did learn a big lesson which is it’s the registry operator which is as important as the string in determining how successful the string will be.”
What are top ‘characteristics/policies’ of registry operators that you feel will most affect the success/failure of gTLD’s? Are the most critical registry policies those that largely affect ‘launch activities/inventory’ (e.g. quantity, quality and/or pricing of the ‘premium/reserved’ domains held back by the registry)? Or, are they longer-term registry decisions (such as the determination of domain registration pricing; or the stability of that pricing year-over-year)?
Are you able to share any specifics based on your .me versus .xxx experience?
Thanks,
Steve
investing.in
these.gtlds
is.like
getting.paydayloan
no.good
for.you
only.thing.domainers
will.remember
years.to.come
will.be
FRANK.AM
premium.dot.owners
will.love.frank
for.helping.fuel
lots.of.traffic
most.newbies
will.lose
tons.of.money
Good Luck FRANK.AM 🙂
one problem is people are having like a dozen COMPLETELY DIFFERENT conversations at once pretending they’re related.
– newbies losing money
– registries losing money
– no one TLD being able to “catch on” because there are so many
etc…
has nothing to do with the “normalization” of gTLD’s as a whole… all that crap above can happen and gTLD still catch on.
domainers suggesting stuff like 90% will fail but .web will be “one of the good ones” i think are missing the point entirely. how could any of them be “good ones” if gTLD’s still look funny to most people… take one thing at a time here.
domainers that think people will never use these gTLD but at the same time saying “a few will do well like .web and .shop” are probably WAY OFF the mark.
we’re moving to phrases separated by a dot – not a new “default” TLD everyone likes and prefers. i think thats old thinking at this point. a hangover from previous landrushes… sure eventually some TLD will do better than others via registration numbers and/or actual developed sites but first things first… people gotta get used to em.
in some ways the gTLD all need each other to survive. they dont need to all thrive, but being released at once is a major benefit on the pathway to making them “normal” and accepted. they need to be operated by tons of different entities to make sure this thing hits people from all angles.
this.stuff
is.not
that.hard
There are only so many ways you can say things and language will not change. Only the location of the dot will change.
It.seems.confusing
today.but
itwont.tomorrow
Laugh.now
but.this
will.look
normal.one.day
Just as it did in 1993, it will all start with the .BRANDS, and it will take time for those brands to market their TLDs into a use-pattern.
itsa20year.journey
and.it.starts
next.year
YOUR.COM will always have value but the “upside” in value will be limited by the changes to come. Hence my analogy: What would an AM radio station be worth today in the absence of FM and Satellite radio?
Ask yourself what you will navigate to when every brand looks: LIKE.THIS
Good luck to all.
Frank,
You made some good points but i have some doubt about “following the brands”.It is impossible for every brand to get his right of the dot like small-middle companies.So what will they do?
If icann somehow makes it very cheap to operate a registry then you are right but until then this era is no different to small companies like the offering of .net or .biz.Only they will more options like .web
I agree things will always change but i would call a real revolution where ICANN made it possible for everyone to register his right of the dot.
Who knows that could also be true someday.
Note: AM radio comparison is still not good. 🙂
Steve
Good questions, post will be coming on that
What and who are these new tld’s being targeted at? (In no particular order):
1. Companies.
2. Domainers.
3. The Public.
There may be others but I reckon these are the main groups. As a relatively unsuccessful domainer (although I’m still handsomely in profit after 6 years of messing around on the sidelines!), I’d say in 2 years from now I may well have to pack this potential revenue stream in, cut my future losses and declare myself out. That is unless the naysayers are correct and .Com’s manage to keep riding the wave, increasing in value, and putting to shame each new contender who comes along, hoping for a piece of the pie. But if Frank Schilling is right in saying the landscape is soon to totally change out of all recognition, then surely I’ll be faced with too many choices, variations, combinations, competition….as will businesses, the public, and fellow domainers. I love 3d printing domains, so therefore I’ll be looking to register variants on that theme in how many extensions? At how much per registration? Can I track down promo codes for. Ny, .web, .shop, .3dprinting? For the extentions I don’t or can’t cover, year after year, does that leave the companies I’m hoping to sell to the chance to pick an alternative extention for registration fee?
The winners as far as I can see presently are:
1. Companies
2. The Public
3. Registrars
The losers:
1. Domainers
Hope you all get to laugh in my face further down the line, and I don’t mind expressing domainer anxiety over this subject, in fact I wish more people would, but I still think there’s a very real chance this new phase could ‘catch on’, though.personally.I.hope.it.fucking.doesn’t.
3dprintman:
refreshing to see an actual post with someone talking about their actual thoughts rather than chant slogans or lie to themselves.
people assume that if gTLD’s catch on then somehow there will be a way for domainers to profit in a similar way like the past.
if gTLD catch on it takes the wind out of domainers sails for a while.. or forever.
Domainers need to get their head out of their asses and think like the average joe.
The new gTLDs is for the newcomer and the millions of people that are being born.
The registry owners are going to make a lot of money from the newcomers.
95% of websites built on dot com are bullshit websites … and just built for the owner to use and tell their few friends about…that’s what these newcomers are going to do with these new gTLDs…just build a small site to let their friends see it.
Why do domainers keep comparing dot com to new gTLDs…no need to compare…new gTLDs are going to make money for the registry owners like Frank…
.xxx, .mobi, .biz, etc…are successful for the registry owners but not for domainers.
Frank made a great investment and will be happily rewarded.
Frank should NOT waste time with domainers…only 5000 domainers…there are millions of newcomers who want to register .whatever and build a bullshit site to show their friends.
Good Luck to ALL
All Frank said in the comment was that something will change in the next 20 years and the .com will still have value.
No kidding…
Of course something will change in the next 20 years and in 40 years and in 60 years…
This thread was killed by Frank’s comment.
Good luck to all.
I do agree with some points from Aunt most people don’t care about domains. Domainers are a tidy group compared to other industries. Next couple of years a new breed of domain investors will change this industry. We have to agree Frank will do very well from gTLDs and most of us would love be in his shoes. Mike has made some good points showing facts about selling some .me for good money so it’s just a matter of time until it happens again and this will bring lots of great opportunities for flipping domains.
Dot com is the way forward for me and it makes me feel secure. I have been thinking very deeply about this and I believe a large part of the Internet will be controlled by gesture one day and theses gTLDs might have a place. So I have changed my mind I believe there is great opportunity for dot com and very smart gTLDs investors.
Frank Schilling Live From London: “.Com Will Become Like AM Radio”
SEPTEMBER 26, 2013
***************************************
The domain in question is Yes.com, …
We believe that the sales price was around 4.5 million Euros,
https://www.namepros.com/blog/yes-com-sells-for-a-seven-figure-fee.1068321/
****************
Latest Verisign Industry Brief Reveals a Rare Retreat in Total Domain Names Registered Worldwide Due to Expiring New gTLDs
http://www.dnjournal.com/archive/lowdown/2017/dailyposts/20171220.htm
*************************************
half way there… Frank: are you waiting for some source of a miracle? Yield?