We had a chance to chat with Charlie Hilton-Petrou who changed the domain name of his site from a .com to a .Co domain last week.
We wrote about the planned move of the Urban Times which used the domain name theurbn.com and decided to switch over to urbantimes.co
There were plenty of comments to the previous post, many quite negative of the move so Mr. Petrou wanted to explain his move:
“”Firstly, I want to state that our company is not a large corporation, nor even a medium sized one.”
“I would understand the criticism that we received in your previous post’s comments about us if we were, but we aren’t.”
“It is a company ran fully by 3 people in their early twenties. We do not have the budget to bid for high value .com domains and we have a good alternative: http://urbantimes.co
“”We built our business on a fairly weak .com domain, so we are fully aware of the pitfalls and have more experience working with this than most critics out there do. (You try spelling the-u-r-b-n-dot-com over the phone!) We are fully capable of doing so on what we consider a better suited domain for us – even so, our previous links will all redirect to our new home anyway. ”
“Traffic to our site is predominantly from social media through flow, accounting for around 80% or more of our daily page views, so we are not worried about losing too much traffic as one would in other cases.”
“Certainly it has been a consideration but we feel, through our partnership with .CO that we can create a mainstream extension out of .co, especially given that the community of .co users is growing stronger every day.”
“We realized early on that our domain – theurbn.com , was weak and did not fully reflect our name ‘Urban Times’.
“That said, we still managed to garner 300,000 page views a month and 700+ author users on our site.”
“This is not a decision we have taken on a whim and we have read a great deal of content that states that businesses should not be built on .co. That said, the positive case studies (startupbritain.co, tech.co, t.co, etc) are often disregarded as luck. ”
“Well, we are sure with our sound marketing skills, strong social media following and a bit of luck, we will be one of these success stories.”
“”One of the SEO experts at .CO ran an entire SEO analysis of our site for us and patched all of the holes that we had – just an example of how brilliant it is to work with .CO as a partner. They run their business exceptionally well. ”
“Our page rank and Alexa will drop temporarily but will return fast enough. ”
As stated previously, our page views are not dependent on search traffic and with a full audit from .CO, we are in a better position to make search engine traffic a key priority when we climb back.”
“It is natural to be critical of something new, it is also easy to be critical of change, but it is quite fundamentally obvious that .co is a convenient option and one that has allowed small companies such as ours to build big brands and get a domain that really suits.”
We were also attracted to the shortness of the domain – It’s punchy. It sounds like ‘company’.
My co-founder once said “if Steve Jobs had the choice of choosing the ultimate TLD for all websites at the beginning of the internet, he would have picked .co over .com
Urban.Me or UrbanNoman.Me would be other options.
The move seems to be giving them a lot of free press. So nothing wrong with that, and even better if that was their intended plan all along.
Now let’s see if any others jump on the .CO bandwagon, in the hope of similar results. 😉
What a stupid move.
Just cause your partner said it does not make it true.
pirate44@
On a contrary, the theurbn.com was a low quality domain,were urbantimes.co makes sense and the spelling is right,not to mention that they got the ut.co (shortener for their social network) where they alredy saved $1,000,000
Congrats urban times 🙂
Urban Times moved from a terrible domain in .COM (theurbn.com) to a marginal name in .CO (UrbanTimes.co).
I think many of the negative comments are related to the size of the company. It is not like this is a major company.
When a small company changes their domain from a terrible .COM to a .CO that is not news. It is marketing.
How about a quick chat with one of the countless companies that have abandoned .CO for .COM due to the confusion? Companies that the registry were quick to promote like Overstock or Top10.co (Now Top10.com).
Brad
Brad@
Nobody is saying that top10.com is not better then top10.co
But in urban times it was a better choice.
If I was to start a new business now i wold take o.co in a heartbeat over overstock.com and that’s what this .co all about,startups.
Again not to mention that a company that started three years ago with three employee would have such a good domain UT.CO now.
Why is the guy in this article apologizing/explaining himself to .Com domainers?! LOL I noted on a story just the other day that I bid on a .Com and the guy wanted over $100k, so I’m rolling with the .Co instead. Did that spark some debate I’m not aware of? I don’t know because I’m not here to read every comment and spend my days arguing with people I don’t know. I generally state my opinion and move on. You can take it or leave it.
And my opinon on this is clear. .Com is NOT the “be all and end all” of the internet. Even if it once was, it isn’t any longer. The whole landscape is changing. Unlike the company owner above, who implies he simply did not have the resouces to buy the .Com, I will NEVER by the .Com unless the squatter who owns it drops his price by 95% or so. Since that’s not going to happen, I won’t be buying it. It can revert to a parked page, with generic ads, for the next 20 years for all I care. When someone Google’s my new company they will find my site ranked, not his parked page. If some competitor wants to buy the .Com, let him. I’ll be miles ahead given the nature of the business and the fact the landscape is changing… with .Com values diminishing as we speak.
I STRONGLY disagree with the notion that small companies need only become big companies, so they can pay more to buy their .Com domain. Small companies, big companies, medium-sized companies… NO ONE should be buying a .Com unless the numbers make sense. And $100k for a .Com does not make sense in the vast majority of cases. You’re paying a massive premium for a domain that is being devalued. Run the numbers and I would suggest there’s only a relative handful of .Com domains that are still worth big $$. Let’s face it, sex.com is always going to be worth big $$. Not what is once was, but big money nonetheless. As are certain generics like invest.com, business.com, money.com, insure.com and so on. Some generics are worth big money regardless of the extension.
But this notion that every business name needs to end in .Com has become a falacy. Mark my words. As time goes on, we will look back and be able to pinpoint when .Com peaked. Which I believe to be years ago. Not saying .Com won’t have value. Not saying you won’t see the occasional big purchase that bucks the trend. I’m saying it peaked and better options have arisen. The only people still insisting .Com is the “be all and end all” are those who have something to gain. Such as .Com domainers, who have a business model which requires .Com domains continue to appreciate in value.
Why they moved?
the one and only reason IMHO is that they couldn’t get their exact match .com
‘boom shaka laka Boom shaka-laka-laka!’ instantbrand.com
if in doubt ask the previous owner of Cloud.com
it’s costly to have an alternative seldom you see them succeed not even with huge marketing money behind
o.co lessons learned, not even with a mega prime tv push.
You can’t change set behaviors.
The pavlovian response per se is to type .com in the USA
Dam if you do Dam if you don’t, if you succeed the traffic bleed will be huge…
Nevertheless good luck.!
***************
Why is the guy in this article apologizing/explaining himself to .Com domainers?!
by Paul
Exactly! pre-emptive strike 🙂
Paul wrote:
“Mark my words. As time goes on, we will look back and be able to pinpoint when .Com peaked. ”
——————————-
Yes, about the same time the Internet peaked. With mobile devices becoming more and more prevalent, and computer sales suffering because of it, browsing habits will change. People will have a much more limited collection of sites that they visit, and those sites will be accessed through Apps. Apps will rule the future, as websites like Facebook, Skype, Twitter, NetFlix, news sites like CNN, and so many others already know.
gTLDs are late to the party. In fact, they’re still at home, putting on their makeup, and not even in the car yet. Is there any hope for them, with this consolidation of more than enough great, well-established websites that are already out there? How many more websites do people need? They hardly have enough time in the day for the sites they visit now. Only the biggest sites will survive.
Everything changes, and they’ve been changing more rapidly as time passes. Magazines, newspapers, and other old media lost popularity long ago. The same fate will happen to the Internet as we know it today, as many people move on to new devices and ways of accessing information and entertainment.
Fortunately I’ve got over 30 years of software writing experience, which has transferred over very easily to writing Apps, so this is just one more transitional period of many that I’ve gone through. It’s another ‘new beginning,’ and an exciting one at that.
Some of what you say is correct but not all certainly. You are a software guy looking to make money writing apps so your comment is certainly biased to your interests. There will be more websites not less in the future, people want to come online and create their own brand, the world will not be revolving around 10 websites. As an app writer you better hope not.
The world and the Internet are big places. People can make a living just fine not everyone needs to be Mark Zuckerberg, More and more people get online everyday and there will be many top companies 10 years from now that have not even been founded yet.
@hybriddomainer
I’m a software guy, yes, but I also have a huge vested interest in the Internet. I registered my first domain in 1996, but unlike many here who did the same, I only registered a handful of attractive names that I wanted to develop into good websites. Those sites are still going strong today, and get millions of visitors.
I say this to illustrate that while what I wrote in my previous comment above is how I see things going, I’m not exactly thrilled about it. But being in the computer industry for a good amount of time, (I started out programming archaic IBM punch card machines in the ’70s) I’m used to seeing things change, constantly. I should also say that I don’t see things changing overnight… of course, it will take a number of years. At least I hope so. And of course there will be old-school people like myself and those in the business / science / tech / design industries who will use the Internet as they always have. But seeing the trends of how people use mobile devices, and how many are flocking to them while computer sales stall, most don’t use them to surf the net like people on computers do. That’s why sites like Facebook HAVE TO create Apps to interface with their website. (And that’s why investors are worried. Can sites like Facebook make as much money in a mobile world?)
Anyway, it’s just the way things are going. Apps on mobile devices are the new way that many people are beginning to access content on the Internet. And since Apps will influence how one accesses that content, one even has to question how this will eventually affect search engines like Google?
Everything changes. Remember dialing into individual Bulletin Board Systems in the ’80s? It isn’t too far-fetched to see the way the Internet will go as well. It won’t disappear by any means, but, as time goes by, things will change.
ON A SIDE NOTE: I was visiting with my dad over the weekend, and I mentioned the .CO extension after seeing a Overstock.com commercial on TV. While he’s been on the Internet for well over a decade, he had no idea that .CO even existed. I told him that I have some .COs that forward to my .COM sites. This is only ONE reason why I’m not thrilled about the new gTLDs. Not only are they ‘late to the party’… the average person just won’t care. Typical web surfers like my dad, and friends of mine who, like most people, aren’t overly computer-savvy, already have more than enough sites that they visit, while also trying to keep a balance and maintain a normal life in the process. They don’t need more extensions, (and the websites that come along with them), and they won’t have any interest in learning about them.