In a post tonight Inc.com asks Do you Really Need A .Com?
“If you’ve started a business any time in the last 15 to 20 years, you’ve probably struggled with the same issue. There’s the-name-you-wish-you-could-have.com but you can’t have it because someone else already does. There’s the-stupidly-long-name-no-one-will-remember.com but no one will remember it. Or, there’s the-weird-made-up-word-no-one-grabbed-yet.com. ”
“That last category is what gave us Qwikster and other horrible company names, and it seems to be the less-than-ideal solution most young companies settle for.”
“There has to be a better way.”
“It’s time to give up the notion that every respectable business must have “.com” at the end of its domain. ”
“Not using .com can seem like business suicide to me and others who’ve spent decades around the Web… but times are changing and, like everything else about the Internet, what we thought we knew turns out not to be so true after all.”
The article goes on to quote Juan Diego Calle, founder of .CO goes on to cite the best reasons for not going with a .com
You can get the domain name you want.
It won’t hurt your search ranking.
The top search engines, including Google with its huge market dominance, are reportedly adjusting their algorithms so that the new domain extensions won’t be penalized. They claim that websites with the new extensions will rank just as well as the more traditional ones, depending on all the things they usually measure, such as inbound links, fresh content, page titles, and so on.
You’ll get a lot more for your money.
That’s the real attraction of non .com domain names. With traditional extensions, once you register your domain, you won’t hear from them again until it’s time to renew. Not so with .co and perhaps other domains as well. Extensions such as .restaurant might naturally bring you into a community of others who do what you do. And the domain itself may come with some extra perks.””
I know the article is going to cause a big reaction for domain investors and lets not forget I own some 75,000 domain names.
I agree its a simplistic approach to domain names, but with the coming new gTLD’s your certain to see more and more such articles regardless of what you think about this argument people lets call them potential customers of your .com will be reading and reacting.
And yes the article is posted on inc.com a .com
GetYourPopcornReady.com
OK here, ill lay the ground work for us to talk in circles… ready set……
– but nobody will take me seriously using .whatever
– because nobody ever “heard of it”
– and nobody will ever hear of them because they’re not taken seriously.
– but there is no real benefit
but but but buttttt… the best one is domainers keep saying “theres no real benefit”… like c’mon now we can talk pros and cons but if pretending like a naturally sounding reg fee .something compared to the .com priced at $xx,xxx, is not a benefit… if we’re pretending that – well OK then.
“It’s time to give up the notion that every respectable business must have “.com” at the end of its domain. ” – Inc 500
@Berkens
I don’t see Inc.com advising business to avoid Broadway, New York or Main Street, Los Angeles, and open at Donkey Trail, Timbuktu, because all the addresses are taken in New York, and Los Angeles. Until Inc.com moves their internet domain name, or physical address to the boondocks, they will forever look like hypocrites to their readers with this series. Do as I say, not as I do, is not particular appealing. You want to endorse anything, lead by example.
lol, Bing should hire this bully. All the grateful ones may remove .com from their logo but the more things change, the more they stay the same. 🙂
domenclature:
first, what do you expect them to put their website on, a TLD that doesnt exist yet?
secondly, the article says time to give up the notion that EVERY respectable website is on a .COM…. meaning when there are other options you shouldnt feel compelled to “need” the same TLD everybody else is using. they DIDNT say anything about “YOU SHOULD STOP USING .COM IF YOU HAVE AN ACTIVE WEBSITE.”
you made that thought up. its nowhere in the article.
lastly, this is the internet. registering .COM or .POOP doesnt take any longer… unlike moving to a physical location, you’re still on the internet no matter what address you use.
jigga what now?
@ontheinterweb
I can only respond to the article presented, and the reasons given, not the imaginary one in your head.
When Inc.com stated that you don’t have to be on .com nowadays, well, we have other TLDs now, such as .mobi. , .US, .Net, .cc, and so on…
In order words, they don’t have to wait for the non-existent nGTLDs you pointed to. Their statement was not particular, it was general. They didn’t imply just the new GTLDs.
I’ll let the rest of your comment stand.
correction
order = other
geezus H. Christ seriously…. they said you dont HAVE to. that doesnt mean DONT UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES USE .COM… you’re making stuff up.
wtf is so wrong with INC.com that they need to switch anyway? its established.. its memorable.
they’re pointing it you MIGHT BE ABLE TO have a better URL if you’re currently using MyWebsiteIsIncrediblyTooLong.COM
it COULD be more intuitive.
not.. OH SHIT LETS ALL EXIT .COM AS FAST AS WE CAN… this is a strawman desperate domainers keep bringing up.
almost nobody is saying exit .COM under all circumstances.
@ontheinterweb
True, they did not say what you said that I said that they said.
But you must admit that it is a bit hypocritical to say “I live in a .com mansion, but you should move to a .whatever shack”.
What makes a .com more valuable to businesses than other REAL TLDs, and the new gTLDs, is indescribable. It’s not just search or recognition; it entails authenticity, respect, and many intangibles If inc.com sells their name, which is a top notch name, they could raise a lot of money, and then buy one of the other ones for pennies on the dollar, if there’s no real difference between the TLDs, it’s a waste to stick with the .com.
I’m going to just come with a little proof, because everyone’s talking from a passionate point of view, whatever may be motivating that passion. The simple fact is this: neither .co nor .whatever is the way to go if you don’t own the companion .com. The Overstock debacle with o.co proved that. Read Rick’s blog. Want a more direct link? Find the article, then comment with the link.
Owning .anything, .whatever you may think about it, without owning the .com of the same name will, in the short term, mean traffic suicide and bring plenty of business to your competition, unless you rely solely on Google for your traffic. Again, I reference the .co fiasco with Overstock. Proof. Not emotions. Proof. If you want to use just Google, then good content will make all the difference. However, lacking good content, the only way to capitalize on good type-in traffic or take advantage of a good, memorable name is to own the .com as the primary. Not .pro, .travel, .net or even .org.
At some point over the course of the next 12 – 15 years (I base this estimate on the first 12 – 15 years of the Internet) we will see the .others grow in significance, but nobody knows which ones will be dominant and which ones will dot-tank.
Using these new gTLDs will certainly make for good vanity where it concerns apps, companion sites to a .com hub, personal websites or as long-term investments, but the short term will be replete with confusion, uncertainty, instability and more than a little insolvency. Many sponsoring registries will not make it, whatever their balance sheets may read today. Once they start losing money, they’ll likely act like many who sit at the Blackjack table in Las Vegas and start chasing the losing bets with bigger fool’s bets.
In the very long term, I think there will be successes. I am keeping my fingers crossed that Frank Schilling’s Uniregistry will be able to gain so much success they can put up a face-to-face challenge to the great behemoth, Google. But don’t be mislead by sound marketing strategies on the part of a registry. Just because people flock to a gTLD during sunrise doesn’t mean they hang around for long. Look at the .pw gTLD. Everywhere you looked you saw that freakin’ tie dangling in a web ad somewhere. Now, only six months later, who knows anything about it?
.Co is in your face, and it’s easily confused as a typo of .com — .cm is a more logical typo, when you think about it, if one actually knows how to type — but what is the drop rate of .co? What percentage of registrations are held for a year and drop, versus total .co registrations? Compare that to .com or .net.
Obviously, it is way too early to know which opportunities in the new gTLD space will work for investors, which is why only those with money to waste should really be taking a chance, and even those gambles will still come with careful deliberation of certain facts and user trends.
For the moment, if you buy a .whatever without first owning the .com, you’re just a fool, in my not-so-humble opinion.
I am offering INC.com here now, officially, $100,000 for the name INC.com
Since they can buy a .whatever for $135 or less, they should accept my offer. If the TLD doesn’t matter, it’s a waste for them o stick with the .com.
so, if im a straight guy and i write an article saying gay people should be able to get married…
should i stop being straight and turn gay and go get gay married so i can lead by example and not be a hypocrite?
no! because what im doing is just fine too. i’d simply be pointing out that going forward “other ways” should be OK when the perception today is that its not.
“so, if im a straight guy and i write an article saying gay people should be able to get married…
” should i stop being straight and turn gay and go get gay married so i can lead by example and not be a hypocrite?
– otheinterweb
The answer is simple. You will be open to criticism, yes. One may not criticize you in that particular case, but if one chooses to do so, it will be in order.
so if i advocate for womens rights i should have a sex change first? its like 3rd grade logic man..
examples where there is a benefit to considering different TLDs:
– you dont have a website yet
– the .com address you’re currently using is incredibly long and unnatural sounding (core2foodsupermarket.com)
.Com is going to have the most to lose as many of its highest profile users switch to their own .brand TLDs. It will separate big businesses from everyone else. When every bank and tech company is using its own TLD, it’s hard to imagine a great $10 a year .com name will be seen as being significantly better than a great name in any other gTLD. Six- and seven-figure domain name sales are also less likely to happen when the same amount of money can get you your own TLD. It will be interesting to see what the price of a .brand TLD will be in the next round. Hopefully the process will become less complicated and more affordable.
The .co issue is very different from what will happen to new gTLDs. .web isn’t confusing with .com, so as long as people get used to not add .com automatically, which brands with new gTLDs will mass communicate so they stop doing it, new gTLDs will do fine.
Even so, .com will still be king as in having the highest sales value for a name among all TLDs. What will change is the valuation; I don’t know if it will drop just a bit or drop a lot, but it will be less. Supply & demand.
Also, I don’t see large .com deals happening these days as domainers flushing out inventory. It’s just business as usual; it will take years to notice a trend, even if the trend has already started (if it did).
Taking the Dot Com out of generics is like trying to take the “M” Out of Mustang or the “R” Out of Rolls Royce – How they are trying., Good Luck
“There has to be a better way.”
No – there is not – but the new non.com registries will benefit by suggesting otherwise – so what is wrong with selling something to someone who then contacts the .com owner with “proof” they have other options = who cares- everybody wins – I do not make the rules – I simply play by them 🙂
IMO this is very similar to Ford having 90 percent market share in the beginning and all cars were black , now many years later Ford still sells millions of cars but so does gm so does Toyota so does the list goes on and on… Times change ask the major newspapers if the way people get their information can change , new products are introduced every day and the good ones are embraced quickly , my daughter is 13 and her friends are not intrenched in .com with solid marketing IMO many of the .whatevers will be very successful.
Once upon a time about a week ago, I saw an article about the new gTLD program written by InformationWeek and wrote a somewhat lengthy response. Most articles about the domain industry written from the outside are unfair, and most articles written about the new gTLD are primarily PR hype. In contrast, the InformationWeek article was quite fair; and the author clearly did genuine research. So I have nothing against them whatsoever.
Nonetheless, they didn’t allow my response to be posted or explain why (length, I suppose). Since what I wrote relates to the topic here at hand, maybe I can publish it in the TheDomains.com comments section rather than letting it go entirely to waste. Please keep in mind that it was written for a mainstream audience rather than experienced domain investors.
As follows:
I’d like to elaborate on some of the drawbacks of this new gTLD initiative — not because I’m entirely opposed to the program but because the the benefits are sure to be exaggerated by profit-hungry registrars and registries with large advertising budgets. Therefore it’s important to counterbalance some of the inevitable marketing spin with a healthy dose of criticism.
(1) New extensions are a tax on all websites. Companies will feel pressure to register additional domains to protect their brand not just from cybersquatting but also from legitimate competition in search results with similarly named websites. Acquiring and maintaining those additional domains is costly both in terms of time and money. And that added business cost will be passed on to ALL online consumers. Some people have called the new gTLD initiative an extortion racket. Although the reality is more nuanced than that, there is certainly a grain of truth in that assessment.
(2) New extensions do not alleviate naming pressure. Yes, quality .COM domains are scarce — in the sense that they are mostly registered by now (just as land is mostly owned) and priced rather high (just as land is priced above what the pilgrims paid). So, on the face of things, this flood of new extensions would seem to enable consumers to find great available names. But is that really the case?
Suppose I wanted to call my website “Information Week” but found that InformationWeek.com is already in use. Would I register Information.Club or Information.Store or Information.XYZ or Information.LOL or Information.FAIL? Or all of them? Which one? And suppose I settle on Information.Club. Does that remove the necessity of owning InformationClub.com? No, it doesn’t. In this brave new world of hundreds of vanity extensions, you will STILL have to obtain the .COM. Otherwise, you only own half a brand name. Inevitably, you’ll leak traffic to the corresponding .COM, which undermines all marketing efforts and results in brand confusion. Furthermore, you may find yourself competing in search results with another site using an almost identical domain name. Trademarks are no help here, since the other site may be something entirely different. Nevertheless, it will be Information.Club versus InformationClub.com, both vying for that #1 spot in Google and bidding against each other with SEO and SEM.
Vanity extensions can look great, but they’re terribly unwise if you don’t own the matching .COM. This isn’t a hypothetical problem. Look at del.ico.us / Delicious.com and Join.me / JoinMe.com. Both those companies originally began with vanity extensions and have subsequently judged it necessary to acquire the .COM at considerable cost. Join.me still displays the .ME extension, which is smart branding. But it’s crucial that they own JoinMe.com as well.
(3) These new vanity extensions do not shorten names. With .COM sites, the .COM isn’t really perceived as part of the name. Rather, it’s the default — simply assumed to be present, almost like the “www.” in front. Thus Amazon.com is known simply as “Amazon”. And Ebay.com simply as “Ebay”. And Google.com simply as “Google”. If they were Amazon.club, Ebay.online, and Google.inc … then their names would be longer — “Amazon Club”, “Ebay Online”, and “Google Inc”. Those names would also be ambiguous with AmazonClub.com, EbayOnline.com, and GoogleInc.com. The fact of the matter is that at most one extension can be perceived as invisible. Primarily that is .COM. Any one of these new extensions actually adds two words to the brand name. Going back to my earlier example of Information.Club, the vanity extension has actually added the words “dot club” to the name.
(4) Pre-registrations are a TERRIBLE idea. I cannot stress that enough. Not only do these pre-registrations fail to guarantee any eventual ownership or even priority for consideration, but they also increase the cost to the applicants! We’ve seen this with virtually every launch of any new extension for years. Domain speculators aside, we’ll see the registries themselves betting on most of the best domains. Registries will cash in any way they can, and that definitely includes reserving the best domain names for premium prices. Today, for example, you’ll find the very best .TV or .XXX domains owned by the registries themselves — often priced at several thousand dollars per year rather than the $10 customary for .COMs.
When a person responds to the TV commercials by naively pre-registering their intended domain, they are in fact signaling to the registrars and registries precisely which domains are in high demand. At this point, we’re still months or years away from open registration. So it stands to reason that the for-profit companies behind this new flood of online freedom have every reason to gather information from their future customers about which domains to hold back and charge most for. If I along with several other people pre-register, say, Example.Thingy, what happens? Most likely, the registry will decide to reserve Example.Thingy for $5,000 or $50,000. Someone else may be watching and also register ExampleThingy.com, anticipating that I’ll need it. Meanwhile, if I’d simply kept my mouth shut, I might eventually have registered the same domain for much less. These things are typically difficult to prove with certainty, but consumers would do well to be a bit cynical.
…
I could go on, but that’s enough for now. The new extensions will enrich the online experience in certain sectors. But they will cause more waste and inefficiency overall. Go slowly. Seek advice. And be careful.
Joseph Peterson
it does seem somewhat hypocritical of inc.com to say this owning a fabulous .com. do they really know what its like to build a brand on a less than stellar .com or alternate tld?
regardless, the article is basically saying businesses that can’t afford their proper .com’s could use any old tld. and sure, they can but does this not say to just about anyone, customers, partners, investors that i am a small business who can’t afford to play with the big boys? which is fine for small businesses but to advise a company that is going to spend six figures per year in advertising to not spend 10-50k on a good domain is bad advice in my opinion. a good domain is advertising and some of the best.
if you’re poor, go .co.
“my daughter is 13 and her friends are not intrenched in .com with solid marketing IMO many of the .whatevers will be very successful.”
I do not care about 15-20 years from now – and neither do marketing / branding folks and businesses themselves – they care about now – there will not be .whatevers.
Using your analogy the gas car (.com or any other DOT domain) may be replaced by an electric car (whole different technology) using the same roads
INC Magazine was involved in one of the worst WIPO decisions of the decade when they managed to convince the panel to give them INC.mobi:
WIPO Case No. D2006-1479
There also were deeply dark rumblings about the company’s past at the time.
@BrianWick
thats great you dont care about 15-20 years from now but statements like this dont stop time from moving forward. we can freeze you in some sort of time capsule if all you care about is right now, better preserve it.
its called planning for the future while dealing with right now and watching events unfold and adapting as they happen.
crazy concept i know. but maybe if you say “i dont care about the future” 3 times fast while clicking your heals together it’ll have the meaning you’re trying to emphasize..
yes, appreciate right now and what you can do with it. some people are interested in watching the future of domains though.
but of course you dont care about that – why would you – reading a domain blog and all i wouldnt figure it would even be the slightest interest to you.
interweb –
“its called planning for the future while dealing with right now and watching events unfold and adapting as they happen.”
once you have skin in any game – let the world know please.
FYI – I planned for the future 15 years ago 🙂
oh, i see what this is.. awwwwww cute.
you want the credit for right now. OK good job and all, seriously. if you got something right 15 years ago i really mean that but you lose points for pretending you’re the center of the universe and that progress and change stops right there.
because the discussion moves on even if grumpy people that arnt interested in following it anymore still throw in their “but i was there first” pat-on-the-back routine every couple posts..
This is where it all changes:
http://domainnamewire.com/2013/10/15/four-xxx-domain-names-sell-for-600000/
people will buy from .whatever site Google puts in front of them.
And it likes relevant targeted .tlds better.
That’s the ball game, folks.
just to comment here you need to log in with facebook or twitter etc
and then the post headline is do you really need a dot com.
all this rhetoric is about selling dot whatever which some register is selling
when the mist fades and dot tractor has long since been forgotten , dot com will still be king.
if you need to be on face book to comment, you need dot com