Inc.com published an interesting story last night entitled Inside the New Domain-Suffix Gold Rush.
The story starts out by saying:
“Before 2005, who’d ever heard of an “etsy?”
Etsy, Tumblr, and Pinterest are just a few examples of the curious and previously unheard names that have cropped up in recent years. Those names weren’t necessarily the entrepreneurs’ first choice, but rather, their first choice of an available URL. On the Web, business-branding decisions are driven as much by the absence of available domain names with the suffix “.com” as they are by the need a start-up to stand out–and sound both fresh and reliable.
That’s all about to change.”
While the article seems to want to chat about the new gTLD’s it doesn’t.
Instead the story focuses on ccTLD’s the brandable type:
“countries with appealing suffixes are licensing the rights to use their names in the United States. There are URLs such as Nest.io (an Indian Ocean domain), Letter.ly (a Libyan domain), and Turntable.fm (a Federated States of Micronesia domain).
Specifically, the .co name, which hails from Colombia, is catching on with start-ups that think it can help them burnish their brands and stand out in Cybespace, where it’s often hard to be heard among the crowd of competing names.
“I wanted to keep the MyTab name, and I was not going to change my company name to accommodate [a .com domain],” says Heddi Cundle, founder of MyTab.co, an online travel gift card site based in San Francisco, which changed to .co about two years ago.”
Why did Ms. Cundle go with a .Co domain?
The .com holder wanted $100K for it and she didn’t have the resources to purchase it.
The story then goes on to tell a video production company, Long Shot Productions,who recently began using .tv instead of .com and .co. For one thing, Long Shot Productions found that someone had already bought the .com. But .tv was available for a mere $25.”
“I would like the .com, but I thought .tv would stand out more in people’s minds,” Latino says.
The story talks about the site Dressrush.com changing its domain to Tailored.co, SteelVaultData.com, which became Steelvault.co; Projectivenyc.com, which became projective.co; and HowtobeaRetronaut.com, which became simply Retronaut.co.
The story quotes Lori Ann Wardi VP of .Co as well.
You can read the entire article here.
Inc is one of the better magazines covering tech and sometimes domains these days.
The examples you give in your post I think are what lots of business owners are going through. Do they have enough resources to buy the .com? Do they change an existing company name to a .com name they can afford? It’s a trade off and now people are going to have a lot more choices, if the gtlds ever get rolled out.
Nice read.
Maybe they are taking baby steps as the general population isn’t aware of much beyond .com
I’m thinking its a baby steps article to bring people up with what is going on in the domain space. New gtld’s as most of us know is a greater step forward. Something still tells me that .com is always going to remain a hub to all this new business.
To the general public gtld’s and cctld’s are one in the same, not .com. I am not saying they are bad.
“I see start-ups all around me who understand a strong brand is not putting a word on .com that does not make sense,” says Sara Morgan, co-founder of Tailored.co.
Like I´ve said many times before – in the “new” world of online branding, .com will see a decline and the .Me´s, .TV´s and other great extensions will continue to rise. The statement of Mrs Morgan verifies just that. The only reason we still buy/reg .com`s every now and then is to protect our brands.
Funny btw – according to Who.Is, MyTab.com was registered March 21st, 2012. According to domaintools MyTab.com was registered back in July 2001. So which one is it?
Looks like the “new reg date”, March 21st, 2012 is due to the whois privacy. If the owners of MyTab.co notice this, and they have a TM running on the term “MyTab”..we all know where this could end.
@Mr.T wrote:
“Like I´ve said many times before – in the “new” world of online branding, .com will see a decline”
—
Since Tailored.com was registered in 1999, Ms. Morgan didn’t really have much of a choice, unless she wanted to pay for it. If she had the choice, and the .COM version of the name was available in 2011 when she registered Tailored.co, do you think she would have picked .CO? The answer to that is obvious, and would preempt the need to have this conversation.
It’s always good to be first in people’s minds. That’s why Coca-Cola is king, even though Pepsi, Crown Cola, and so many other store brands came afterward. The same can be said for .COM. If Fortune 500 companies suddenly go insane, and start re-branding themselves away from .COM en masse, (.WTF would be a good choice), you can tell me, “I told you so.” Until then, Ms. Morgan’s lone statement, that appears to suggest to certain individuals the fantastical thought that .COM will fall out of favor and go into decline, is nothing more than wishful thinking.
@Grim, I´m not saying .com will disappear or anything close to that, because it won´t. I´m saying .com will see a decline. It doesn´t matter if new gTLD´s are waiting on the horizon, it doesn´t matter how many ccTLD´s there are. All that matters is what the average Joe thinks and knows.
In Europe the use of ccTLDs has been constant, all the .de´s, co.uk´s, .fr´s and now the likes of .ME´s and .TV´s. Yes, .com is king in the US, but outside the US the story is a little different.
Even in the US companies/CEO`s won´t spend millions of dollars on domains anymore unless they are category killers like sex.com or music.com. Head over to DNjournal and look at the numbers compared to 2007-2009. Numbers don´t lie.
Also, lets not forget the power of the younger generation. Young people today are growing up with a wide range of alternative extensions. They don´t believe in the “.com will always be king” analogy because a lot of the new upcoming “cool” brands don´t always use .com (especially outside Europe). Where do you think this will take .com 5-10 years from now when the teens of today run the brands/businesses of tomorrow? A new mindset and a new way of looking at online brands will bring a completely different outcome! That outcome is not in .com´s favor.
Brands today don´t HAVE to choose a .com because they have options. 5-20 years ago companies didn´t have the same options, hence they chose a .com. Lets not forget that some .com´s are way overpriced 🙂
A great example of what I´m trying to say is this – someone just splashed out $150,000 on Buy.Me. Why? For one, Buy.com is taken, and even if it wasn´t it probably would have an unrealistic pricetag. Secondly, Buy.Me is much more brandable. It sounds better, it looks better – it´s more 2012. Sure, they may have to pickup the BuyMe.com and forward it to Buy.Me, but that won´t be as costly.
2012 is all about online brands and online brands use alternative extensions to stand out, to seperate themselves from the rest, to make it a more personal experience and to make the brand name more engaging.
Where will .com be 5-10 years from now? I don´t know. What I do know is that it won´t be where it is today 🙂
It’s true that you see new companies using .me, .co, .tv, but how many choose this extension when the .com is fully available to hand reg? Probably none.
Any ‘decline’ in .com being selected by newcomers would be more due to the fact that it’s a mature extension with all the best keywords and terms already taken, and newcomers are forced to use a cheap/lesser quality .com or a good to great alternate extension. The person looking to register a domain today is similar to the ticket holder to a general admission concert in a large stadium. If 95% of the people got there before you, chances are you won’t get a front row seat, but be somewhere in the outer reaches. You will see the concert, but the people closer to the stage will likely get a better experience.
And it’s true these new extensions will be more accepted as time goes on, as each new internet user (youngster) is seeing these extensions right off the bat, and doesn’t remember a time when there was only .com, .net and .org.
But every time a .co or .me gets developped into a business or website, the .com holder of the same name will get some of that traffic and benefit.
@Domains
“If 95% of the people got there before you, chances are you won’t get a front row seat, but be somewhere in the outer reaches. You will see the concert, but the people closer to the stage will likely get a better experience.”
The difference is that late ticket buyers at a concert will always get a bad experience, even in 100 years. But for alternative TLD vs .com, the trend could change someday. I’m not saying it’s bound to happen in the near future, but it’s still possible, especially with all the new Internet users coming from huge countries like China, India, Brazil, etc that are not tied to .com like the US.