The story was written by Ben Crawford who is the CEO of Central Nic and was featured on CNBC last week
Speaking about new gTLD’s Crawford said in part:
“In the future, locally focused websites will use their city TLD, websites on specific cultures will use their community TLD, and businesses will use their industry TLD or their own .brands.
“New and more secure distribution methods will emerge with these more informative TLDs. The current model for distributing domain names using generic extensions (.com, .net, .org, etc.) has huge consumer benefits, in that anyone can get a domain name online quickly and affordably from more than 100,000 registrar and reseller websites.”
“However, the system also contains serious flaws. Because these domains are sold as an unrestricted commodity, anyone can obtain domain names that include trademarks — legitimate trademark owners and “brand pirates” alike. ”
“The result is that the current domain name system is rife with speculators, squatters, phishing sites and so on, with an entire industry built around processing complaints, legal actions and the arbitration of domain name disputes.”
“The .brand TLDs will remedy many of these issues by creating a regulated online space that can be tightly controlled by the principal that sets its policies. As a result, consumers will benefit from the assurance that all domain names with a given ending are authentic and trustworthy. Banks, charities, online merchants, industry associations and other entities that rely on online transactions will particularly benefit from this controlled online presence.”
“The customer message from any major brand or global website with its own TLD will be as simple as: “You no longer have to type ‘.com’ at the end of our web address.”
“Regardless of its impact on accessing or suppressing adult content online, .xxx is poised to be the extension that incites 1,000 new top-level domains, and now is the time to prepare for the impending Internet revolution.”
Mike what did you think of the last line, “you will no longer have to type .com at the end of our extension”
A brand will still need the .nike or .ebay. This is starting to get wild. Do you worry about your 75,000 domains in all this ?
RH
This is the future of the space.
People still can and will type in .com but they will over time learn they can type stuff on the Right side of the dot which will be as meaningful as the left side.
Its coming.
I’m participating.
I will not be the only “big” or famous or successful domainer putting stakes on the new extensions as well.
I think its a smart strategy. To believe the Internet will look the same in 2020 as 2010 is foolish imo. Thank you for the reply.
“To believe the Internet will look the same in 2020 as 2010 is foolish imo.”
———————-
To believe the Internet will look the same in 2012 as 2010 is foolish imo.
I agree that the Internet is going to look a lot different in 2020 than in 2010. However, I don’t think the domain name environment is going to look much different. .brand and other innovations will probably appear and achieve some success, but that will only be with the very biggest brands (Fortune 500 types). It will be prhobitively expensive for many companies to own and maintain a .brand extension so .com will remain an important player in the domain space. Moreover, overproliferation of new extensions will cause more confusion than anything In 10 years, I think there will be both more .coms and more domain registrations in other extensions. The Internet is still growing.
In my opinion, the growth of the Internet will continue to sustain and drive the value of .com domains. It is possible that as new extensions are introduced, there could be some panic in the .com space that will present a buying opportunity that will be rewarded a few years down the road when .com is still king.
.com
I agree that .Com is and will continue to be the King for a long time, maybe forever but as i’ve said before forever is a really long time.
However you do not have to be King to make a lot of money.
I mean Richard Branson isn’t King of England but he has done pretty well for himself.
More thoughts if you haven’t read this post check it out:
http://www.thedomains.com/2011/03/15/right-of-the-dot-com-my-take-on-the-new-gtlds-the-next-25-years-how-you-can-profit/
The .brands don’t affect domainers IMO. You were not allowed to own a domain with Nike or google in it anyway. So .nike does not affect the valuation of good generic sports.com domains. The .nyc or .paris could affect, could not saying definite but could affect geo .com valuations.
Mike I hand regged TLDRoulette.com for this whole new Tld scene.
Honestly, even if .com were cut down by 80% in traffic b/c of new extensions, the new extensions might involve SO many more new investors that the overall market of investors explodes causing the .com domains to go up in value anyhow.
Domains are crazy. Once the rest of the population starts to figure this out they will be buying/trading domains like Beanie Babies, regardless of PPC parking income or other metrics. It’ll Tulipmania for domains b/c folks will be looking for places in this bad economy over the next ten years where they can make 10% or more on their investments. Domains certainly leap this hurdle.
It’s going to be crazy to watch. Getting involved to some degree is the best solution. That’s my take……diversification to the New World Domain Portfolios is the hedge that will be needed.
The extensions for companies, places, products, etc….. will only have an effect to a point on the overall Net and surfing habits b/c when surfers have to start to try to remember too many individual extensions they will not recall many of them. There will be “domain extension overload” .
They will have their place in marketing, but they will be like third level sub domains, like hotels.boston.com. They have their place in marketing, but won’t necessarily change the world, just the landscape. This will be true with the new extensions.
Think brand & status is important (tosh but true) every fortune 500 will be a .com It is part of the landscape weather you need it or not it is a brand, now part of our environment, the public will decide if the site is authoritative. IMO given the choice I will take the .com / country code keyword as my platform. The rest is pyramid selling. Why would a fortune 500 need anything else?
http://www.marshallmcluhanspeaks.com/?video=SAY_005
By the way “Richard Branson” is not royalty. “Virgin” the brand will possibly last longer?
I didn’t say he was royalty, I said he wasn’t king.
More my point you don’t have to be number 1 to make money.
He is a “Sir” though.
In the idealised model ICANN is choosing to present it’s say one or two brands per company. However the real world is way more complex and in a flat single level root there are going to be way more naming collisions and problems than in the current system. Plus you can’t have single letters, or two letters or hypens….
For example
.ibm .dell no problem but what about Hewlett Packard? .hp is not possible.
Proctor and Gamble won’t be able to have .pg but their situation is more complex because their brands are built around different products and $185,000 + $25,000 p.a. just doesn’t scale well….. .ace, .ariel, .bold, .bounce, .bounty, .cascade, .charmin, .cheer, .comet, …. and that’s just the a, b & c’s of brands for the household care division!
Who gets .merck? The U.S. drug company? Or the German drug company with the same name? This is a step backwards; in the existing hierarchical system merck.de and merck.com can equitably coexist.
.brands are a classic example where you can pay ICANN $185,000 + $25,000 p.a. in addition to $10. p.a. for a .com. Now that may help with a short term branding advantage, but it means if a major player moves to the right of the dot in any vertical then all the other companies will also have to move to simply enjoy the same level of implicit DNS branding.
To put those costs in context, a single company like Proctor and Gamble with over 80 brands will need to spend over $15,000,000 if they wish to apply for all their brands as new gTLDs and pay ICANN a further $2,000,000 every year going forward compared with the existing system cost of $800 p.a.
Once the other companies move much of the DNS branding advantage is lost but the year on year costs remain. Great for ICANN and their contracted parties, but ultimately that cost has to be borne by consumers.
“The extensions for companies, places, products, etc….. will only have an effect to a point on the overall Net and surfing habits b/c when surfers have to start to try to remember too many individual extensions they will not recall many of them. There will be “domain extension overload” . ”
No doubt, not only will they have to remember whats on the “right of the dot” but they will have to remember whats on the “left of the dot” 😉
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“The customer message from any major brand or global website with its own TLD will be as simple as: “You no longer have to type ‘.com’ at the end of our web address.”
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…but you will have to type nike at the end of the web address which is one letter longer. 🙂
Hmmm, was it shop.nike or was it store.nike or sport.nike or shoes.nike, perhaps it was nike.shoes?
….arr stuff it, I’ll just go to zappos.com instead 😉
I guess it could be worse if your company is called something longer like .mercedesbenz…or was it .mercedes…or .merc ???
—
@ gmpgroup
“Once the other companies move much of the DNS branding advantage is lost but the year on year costs remain. Great for ICANN and their contracted parties, but ultimately that cost has to be borne by consumers.”
Great post gmpgroup, its a money spinner for ICANN/partners and a money pit for Brands if they do buy into the branding hype.
Either way they’ll still have the same costs to deal with people squatting on their brand in other extensions like .com, .net, .co.uk etc
Gpm
“”.ibm .dell no problem but what about Hewlett Packard? .hp is not possible.”
Yes .HP is not possible because 2 letters are reserved for ccTLD’s.
So you don’t allow new gTLD’s because 2 letter extensions are not possible?
“Who gets .merck? The U.S. drug company?”
That would be determined like any string contention by auction
“That would be determined like any string contention by auction”
And the ones that would be making most of the profit from such an auction of an already existing Trade Mark or company/brand gtld would then be …?
Yes .HP is not possible because 2 letters are reserved for ccTLD’s
So you don’t allow new gTLD’s because 2 letter extensions are not possible?
first it isn’t just HP’s problem…
BA British Airways $14.6 billion sales
BK Burger King $2.2 billion sales
BN Barnes & Noble $5.4 Billion sales
BP British Petroleum $246 billion in sales
BT British Telecom $34 billion in sales
If any of their competitors with 3+ letter brands ICANN has managed to award an implicit DNS branding advantage.
If there is to be any hope for an equitable solution for the new gTLD proposals ICANN needs to take them back to the GNSO and introduce categories. ICANN is very, very reluctant to do this –
Why? My guess is because they know a) the majority of need (speculation aside) could be satisfied within some categories; and b) different categories of new gTLDs will have markedly different benefits and impacts for consumers.
It is difficult to represent the complexities of the world in any system and the flat, first come first served single level approach ICANN is proposing is actually more cumbersome, more restrictive, more expensive and less equitable than the very successful existing system it is seeking to extend. Quite simply what ICANN is proposing even at this late stage and after years of planning is not a sensible approach for the introduction of new gTLDs.
The two character problem for .brands is just one of many profound problems which ICANN quietly chooses to ignore.
Another less obvious but very serious .brand problem for example….
The success of the Internet is because it delivers efficiency to the market place. It enables anyone to reach an unfathomable number of people simply by buying a domain name.
.brands will destroy the ability to compete on a level playing field. At the moment to launch some software designed to compete with major brands such as Microsoft or Sun costs $10 + hosting a year then it’s down to skill and innovation.
Medium sized players will have to consider whether it’s worth spending $185,000 + $25,000 per year with ICANN to enjoy the same level of implicit DNS branding and enter ICANN’s .brand super league. For start ups and smaller players the cost of admission to this implicit DNS branding advantage is likely to prove prohibitive.
The level playing field of the Internet will be destroyed.
.info was supposed to be for Information type sites.
.biz was supposed to be for Business type sites.
.tv was supposed to be for TV sites.
.coop was supposed to be for Co-op sites.
.travel was supposed to be for Travel related sites.
.me was supposed to be about Me.
The above extensions have all had various levels of success and sales, but nothing even close to .com, .net and certain country codes.
So are we to think that people will catch on to .sports, .xxx, .boston, .video, .games and so on for their industries anymore than the predessors did?? I think the experiment has already been done and has fared to be luke-warm at best. I don’t see .info and .biz getting stronger year after year. All these cheaper alternatives we already have to .com and still they haven’t been picked up to a great extent.
Will these new extensions make it? Maybe, who knows. But like the blog entry says, there is some money to be made in all these new extensions, but it won’t necessarily be easy money. I think people who are already in domaining will see which extensions matched with which keywords will have the best potential – so at least our experience has prepared us for this launch.
Even with the numerous choices of extensions we have now, we still see .com’s sell the most and for the highest prices week after week, year after year. I honestly think every new extension that comes out just makes .com look better. If there is any pending threat to domains or .com, I think we will start to see the weekly sales drop off in volume or price, which really hasn’t happened yet.
I will still be watching which extensions they come out with, and likely buy a few ‘just in case’ or for personal use. You still have to keep and open mind and give yourself options.
@Domain Report
Well said. I’ll definitely be sticking with .COM. Let the gamblers who are clearly just bored, even though they have hundreds of thousands of .COM’s, have fun with this. The only difference between .xxx, .sports, .music, and, like you said, .info, .biz. .tv, etc. is that now a handful of wealthy/risk-loving domainers have the opportunity to get in on the OTHER SIDE OF THE ACTION (create an extension/registry). But the result, in terms of adoption/popularity, will likely be the same as .biz, .info, .tv, etc.
What he really meant to say here:
“The customer message from any major brand or global website with its own TLD will be as simple as: “You no longer have to type ‘.com’ at the end of our web address.”
Was:
“The customer message from any major brand or global website with its own TLD will be as simple as: “We hope that you don’t forget our new TLD and automatically type ‘.com’ at the end of our web address.”
great part of my domains are .com and great part of the domains I will buy will be .com
and I can’t imagine how many people (and who) could buy a .hp or a .canon or a .honda
Its a shame there can be no real discussion Mike, you either get TLD cheerleaders or .commers afraid they are being diluted and just make agenda based statements.
While I have much respect for David Castello, that’s not what Nike would be saying if they owned .nike, the .com would just redirect to .nike.
Mike I am curious what would the home address be for brands that get their own ? http://www.nike ?
feel very sorry for big alternative tlds holders, their value will shrink.
taught by my own bitter experience that investment in undervalued .com’s is the best bet
Perhaps not that new. Looking at print ads, I see mostly .com, .org, .net domains plus quite a few non-memorable URLs from institutions in the style of phd.edhuspaqhra.ac.uk/perspectives
Probably working for them – if it´s perfect from a marketing point of view in a competitive environment is another matter.
start offloading your .coms now
before it is too late.
“start offloading your .coms now
before it is too late.”
Good work Robert, keep waving those poms poms 🙂
://articles.economictimes.indiatimes.com/2011-03-24/news/29181495_1_new-domain-internet-corporation-websites
Will INDIA Lead the Way in Re-Structuring the Clinton(s) ICANN ?
TRUMP.XXX