Jennifer Wolfe is a digital strategy advisor and executive leader. She is nationally accredited in public relations and the Co-author of Brand Rewired and Domain Names Rewired.
She runs a blog at Wolfedomain.com. On Friday Jennifer wrote a post entitled Dot Com Bubble (pt.2). I wanted to first find and read part 1, that post looks to have been written July 16, 2013 under the title of “New gTLDs and the Brand Bubble”
In that article this is what stood out:
What’s the Value of Your .com Now?
A final important question following the .com bubble – what’s your .com domain and brand worth now? The real answer to this question will depend upon how well you execute your business strategy. Your business strategy must evolve to thinking about how this next generation of the Internet will impact your consumers, users, customers, suppliers and stakeholders. This is strategic planning 101. A major shift is about to occur. To think about it requires some heavy lifting and leadership to recognize the importance of it. Your .com could be just as valuable if not more valuable if you plan correctly for it. But if you stick your head in the sand and hope nothing will change – your .com won’t be worth much anymore.
From the recent article:
After years of venture capitalists pouring billions into dot coms and often paying millions just to acquire the .com name, only to have the lion’s share of those companies completely flame out, is it any wonder that ICANN determined a high barrier of entry was required in the next generation of the Internet ($185,000 to apply for a gTLD)? No one may be crying over the lost VC money, the trickle down impact on the stock market has been felt by all. A brief history lesson provides some guidance. For example, according to John Cassidy in his book dot. con, the biggest venture capital deal of 1999 was $275 million for Webvan, an online grocery store. Two months after starting, it filed for an IPO, which was a new record in the craze of .coms filing for IPOs. It had lost $35 million on sales of just $395,000. Following this IPO, others quickly followed: egreetings.com, mothernature.com, smarterkids.com, ecollege.com, toys.com, pets.com and kozmo.com. The commonality among all of these companies – they had no revenue – only venture capital backing. The venture capitalists were actually creating wealth out of nothing by speculating and launching IPO campaigns.
What should we expect in 2014 as the first wave of new gTLDs start to launch? Will the same irrational exuberance emerge? Will companies based on ideas in the digital frontier receive the same enthusiasm or valuations? In my book, Domain Names Rewired, I asked a few experts how they compared the expansion of the internet with new gTLDs to the .com era of the 1990s.
Read the full post and what the experts said to Jennifer here
Jennifer Wolfe will be a speaker at Namescon.
OH Jennifer, Jennifer, Jennifer
Independent Marketing Analyst/Strategist at UseBiz.com / (.COM ) URL Centric Marketing
The key to utilizing the gTLDs is to first own a .COM Profit Center for their Traffic to Aggregate to. Those who sense this key nuance will truly profit from their introduction.
Winners in gTLD experiment = Well Branded .COM Franchise owners who leverage traffic to their sites with .brand closed gTLDs
Losers in gTLD experiment = Small businesses adopting for start-ups and speculators who buy the generic gTLDs
We cannot make this any clearer.JAS 12/22/13
Gratefully, Jeff Schneider (Contact Group) (Metal Tiger)
🙂 Jennifer – Dit Com Is No 1
Dot Com No1
We can do without misleading headlines. There is nothing in the article to justify “Com wont be worth much anymore”.
Indeed, she doesn’t say much at all, except that people lost a lot of money on DotCom businesses years ago. She tries to connect that to the new gTLDs to stir fear in businesses so they will hire her.
The damn thing is a job solicitation, nothing more. Why is it on TheDomains???
When I search for “Jennifer wolfe” on google she doesn’t show up in the top 10 listings. And she doesn’t own jenniferwolfe.com. I think she is just mad she missed out.
And to all of the spammers, Jennifer Wolfe needs some SEO to get in the top 10 listings on Google for her own name.
“your .com could be just as valuable if not more valuable if you plan correctly for it. But if you stick your head in the sand and hope nothing will change – your .com won’t be worth much anymore.”
She also says your .COM could be more valuable.
The headline is rather sensationalized and not really representative of the whole article.
Brad
Younger people seem to be more comfortable with using cc-TLD’s and other alternate extensions and domain hacks. I think part of it is because of mobile devices a short-2-letter domain is better than a longer .com. Also, some big companies are using them, such as google.me, youtu.be, etc. and people are getting used to soon them. I never thought I would be getting one but I am the proud new owner of bitcoin.me. Of course if the ending is long like most of the new TLDs it really defeats the purpose because the main utility is the shortness.
People like it short. My preference is .co and .com!
Do we use the coma at the end of a phrase or in the coma middle?
name.guru or NameGuru.com? The .com is natural typing.
This is a Good site (coma) end
or
This is a good (coma) Site?
They just look bad. There is a reason why .com where and will be the king for ever.
is it me?
or she has a big mouth?
I bet a million dollars her previous job was as a telemarketer…
She has balls of steel.
Another pathetic dysfunctional attention Wh*&&^re
Common she is a speaker at NamesCon where g’s will be shoved down your throat and I guaranty anyone going will not go home without. Not saying that’s a bad thing. Just remember:
“Depend on the rabbit’s foot if you will, but remember it didn’t work for the rabbit.” – R.E. Shay
Jennifer Wolfe wrote:
> And, what happens to all those companies who paid hundreds
> of thousands of dollars or even millions for their .com – what’s it
> worth now?
Is this where she *implies* that .COM won’t be worth much anymore? Because I couldn’t find a clear statement elsewhere in the article about that.
A shorter version of this article could have been written here in the comments section as it’s just an opinion piece. No real conclusions or answers or much of anything of substance are given as to where the Internet will be after the new gTLDs roll out. It’s just a very basic rundown of what happened in the .COM world, with vague speculation of what might occur in the future.
And gems like this didn’t make it much better:
> Much like in .com, the good ones will succeed and the bad ones
> will fail.
Well… duh. Am I in Junior High again?
And then this:
> After years of venture capitalists pouring billions into dot coms
> and often paying millions just to acquire the .com name, only to
> have the lion’s share of those companies completely flame out,
> is it any wonder that ICANN determined a high barrier of entry
> was required in the next generation of the Internet ($185,000 to
> apply for a gTLD)?
Wait, what? Isn’t paying “millions” to acquire a .COM a “high barrier of entry”? Higher than paying $185K? And yet those companies still failed? 3 out of 4 venture-backed firms in the U.S. fail and don’t return investors’ capital. This has nothing to do with being an online business, or a ‘real world’ business. Plain and simple, most businesses fail.
Anyway, thumbs down on this article.
🙂
I totally agree with Jennifer. There will be 3000 new better options to chose from now , .com has become outdated, old and boring.
i totaly disagree with Jenifer & B. Ieze,
@ B.EIZA
Yes, you’re right, there WILL be 3000 new better options! Buy as many as you can! It’s 1994 again!!! Only smart people like you realize this, so you have a great opportunity to spend spend spend!!!!
Dot-com is so firmly established in the lexicon that it has become synonymous with the web. No other extension can approach rivaling its recall; not the long established .net – nor the recent .biz – nor tomorrow’s .guru. The greater the number of new TLDs that emerge, the more, logically, will the iconic .com stand high above all others. This can result in a win/win for both .com and .everythingelse. So long as they are grounded by dot-com URLs or missionlines, TLDs will be able provide effective sub-domain addresses for individual pages within any website.
No Grim she does not imply she says, “But if you stick your head in the sand and hope nothing will change – your .com won’t be worth much anymore.” It’s actually in the block quote above.
From July 16
What’s the Value of Your .com Now?
A final important question following the .com bubble – what’s your .com domain and brand worth now? The real answer to this question will depend upon how well you execute your business strategy. Your business strategy must evolve to thinking about how this next generation of the Internet will impact your consumers, users, customers, suppliers and stakeholders. This is strategic planning 101. A major shift is about to occur. To think about it requires some heavy lifting and leadership to recognize the importance of it. Your .com could be just as valuable if not more valuable if you plan correctly for it. But if you stick your head in the sand and hope nothing will change – your .com won’t be worth much anymore.
Ah, there are two articles. I went to the source at the bottom of the post where it says, “Read the full post and what the ‘experts’ said to Jennifer here”.
In any event. For those thousands of companies out there that have had success and use .COM, nothing will change. They’re too entrenched in the Internet landscape. Many have had their brand out there and the momentum to go along with it for nearly 2 decades now. Saying that if they “stick their heads in the sand and hope nothing will change”… that their .COM won’t be worth much anymore, is laughable.
This brings up the question, since Apple only applied for .apple, should they be worried? They didn’t even apply for .APP, which one would think would be a natural for them.
No one should be worried. There will be a lot of excitement for awhile, but when the dust settles it will be business as usual. ‘Boring’ as that is. But boring makes money. Exciting, like the whole Internet Bubble of 2000, tends to lose money. I was there when the bubble burst and lost millions. But it was fun and exciting and everyone was smiling… until they weren’t.
No problem and sorry for the confusion, I wanted to make sure I got something in there from each post.
I agree with you I don’t think Apple is worried.
@Grim
.inc and .llc will be much better and more professional than the outdated, old and boring .com , move on man and stop living in the past.
1. Companies now can get their names associated with a professional tld such as .inc or .llc
2. Products , services and brands can now be more specific and clear to deliver their message to their customers with the new tlds
Yes , the internet has changed dramatically and that’s why the .com now does not even worth one tenth of what it used to be worth.
Live domain auctions will be the real fun and popular events now with the new tlds and they will only have quality, diverse, cool, and professional one-word domains .
Independent Marketing Analyst/Strategist at UseBiz.com / (.COM ) URL Centric Marketing
The Smart Money knows One of the biggest misperceptions is that .COM Franchise Business Addresses are not Online Capital Market Structures (Stocks)in infancy. .COM Business Franchises are the very foundation of the Worlds largest Capital Market Structures Online. Those who grasp this nuance, and many already have , will be the biggest benefactors of Capital Market Structures Online Growth. .COM Franchise Addresses are Stocks that have not yet Bloomed. JAS 12/23/13
Gratefully, Jeff Schneider (Contact Group) (Metal Tiger)
@B.EIZA
Personally I’m tired of seeing .COM everywhere. Companies should get a clue that people are bored of being forced to use such an intuitive, well-known and trusted extension… besides, it’s much more fun to guess what hip new extension a company might be using! (Almost as fun as trying to guess their phone number!) And then wondering if it’s the real company, or some scammer.
Companies should realize that web surfers want a little excitement. A little danger. A little Malware that might be slyly put on their computer because Amazon.FLUFFY is really owned by some evil cheese maker in Wisconsin who has no connection to Amazon at all. Let’s bring some fun back to the Internet! It’s not about .COM (boring boring boring!) … it’s not about content (blah!) … it’s about being fun and hip and cool! A billion billionaires are about to be created with these new gTLDs! Bring it on, magic gTLD money machine!!
@Grim
You still didn’t address the two clear points that I made above!
@ B.EIZA
Yeah, they weren’t that important.