There has been a lot of discussion about start ups embracing the new gtlds, it was the choices they needed, that they want to keep their original company name and not have to change just to get the .com. I believe that is true for some, and they will embrace it. There are still many that believe .com is where it’s at.
Today we get another example that will make the .com only camp happy, Moot has rebranded itself to Muut. The company did a post on their blog discussing the transition and it was featured on Tech Crunch as well.
Now Moot.ventures/holdings/company are all available, they could easily keep their name and move to a new gtld, Instead the company moved from Moot.it to Muut.com. I am sure some will try to spin this differently but imo it cannot be spun. Here is a start up that just raised $770,000 that could have easily for $24.99 registered Moot.company but they wanted the .com and went with the alt spelling Muut.com.
From the Muut.com website:
Muut
Welcome Muut! Yes, we know: it might sound funny since you’re not used to it — then again, didn’t Moot sound funny when you first heard it? We loved the name, but honestly, we love the new name even more, and we’re absolutely thrilled with the new url — muut.com.
As awareness of our service kept growing it became clear to us we needed to shift from our .it domain to a .com domain. With Muut we have our 4 letter .com as well as a new distinctive brand.
We have already started the process of migrating everything over to the new domain, but no need to worry — your old embeds pointing to moot.it will continue to work so you won’t need to do anything!
From the Tech Crunch Article:
Moot.it, a startup launched last April to do away with ugly online forums by offering a flexible, customizable and more modern-looking platform for online discussions, has raised $770,000 in new funding and is changing its name to Muut. (Hey, they wanted the .com, so you get what you get these days.)
The funding was led by Oregon Angel Fund, and the other notable investor is the Portland Seed Fund.
Over the course of the year, the company has grown its customer base to over 28,000 and its user base to 300,000, and is currently adding thousands of new users per day. Muut also says its application is now being loaded approximately 150 million times per month.
Read the full story here
New gTLD advocates must be in world of pain, with their wallets suffering in silence. It reminds me of a scene from the film Color of Money featuring Tom Cruise and Paul Newman:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fjN9Qe237bw
where the star says “It’s like a nightmare, isn’t it?” and later “And it just keeps getting worse and worse, doesn’t it?”
There’s a way to stop the bleeding. Stay with .com/net/org and good ccTLDs, and step back from the new gTLDs precipice. Your wallet will thank you.
Moot.it made a good choice by rebranding as Muut.com.
Not everybody will face the same conditions with regard to naming. .COM will frequently be the right answer, but not always.
Agree Joseph its why when people speak in absolutes its always putting their position in a corner. Sure some start ups will embrace but some won’t. Look Moot.Company is sitting right there for $24.99, they obviously did not want those extra 4 letters.
As I have said before, I think the main thing that will happen because of these new gtlds is that the owners of those will want the .com or .net versions of “THEIR” new gtld BUT 99% will be issuing UDRP’s rather than buy them . Will be interesting to see Stats in the future of how many Gtld owners issue UDRP’s to get earlier regged .com or .net .
Curious how much did they paid for Muut.com? It dropped last year.
Moot.com was sold back in 2010 via Sedo for 45,000.00 USD
Gosh…I love love godaddy 99 cent coupon to reg a damn dot COM
dogcafes.com
SAY WHAT AGAIN…yea it is a doT COM
no dollar meal for me at Mcdonald.
What we see here is a second person sticking their hand in the fire and confirming to the first (Overstock.com) and the rest, that it burns; so, it’s up to the 3rd, 4th, … and the rest to decide whether to stick theirs into the fire, or not. But it’s empirical now that fire burns.
When a successful company completely changes the spelling of their brand just so they can have a “dot com” extension says a lot about how important it is to start with a dot com to begin with.
Looking forward to see how Morgan Linton can twist this story. 🙂
My take on this whole new 2000 laundry list of .whatever is plain.
If you spend enough money to have it marketed and branded enough times people will begin to accept it anything as acceptable.
Even with a lot of money O.co went back to Overstock.com and here’s a great one page article regarding why and who else did. http://mashable.com/2011/11/15/overstock-com-changes-name/
A startup, unless has a lot of money will be making it even tougher on themselves coming out by choosing an extension they have to brand right of the dot versus JUST left of the dot and overflow will inevitably go to .com.
Finally nearly every TLD has a chance to be successful by simply selling only 10,000 names which any one worder dot whatever will do that for the shovel sellers to the gold miners. If you invest it may be good pending the name, but with so many extensions it goes back to supply and demand. Business always does. With so much supply theres no real demand for your name extension permutation at any premium dollar (RARE anyway) when there are so many out there AND youll have to bank roll the renewals till the thing catches any sort of wind in its sails. IMO.
The registrars will do well, whether you do or not is another story….oy vey, but nachas and luck to all.
Im gonna go out and buy a cupof.coffee but rest assured, unless its a couple of bucks- I’ll Look.elsewheres
The other point is that unless you have a portfolio of LLLL.com domains you would not benefit from this action either. What the heck is a Muut? With that sort of brand name I have no clue what they sell, what they do nor am I inclined to buy their product or service or visit their website. In my view a descriptive domain name gives a degree of authority which these brandable LLLLs do not. But if companies pay for LLLL instead of descriptive names….
As in “descriptive” do you mean more generic? Many top brands likely sounded a bit odd when they were first introduced and they didn’t give any indication of what the company provided, (Kodak, Sony, Google, etc), but now they’re household names. Personally I prefer unique brandable names because once ingrained in the minds of people, they allow you to stand out much more clearly. (And if you’re lucky enough like Google, you get to create a new word for the dictionary.)
Exactly, when you have something that is unique than you have full control of the branding, Apple had to deal with Apple Music.
Apple computer’s earliest court action dates to 1978 when Apple Records, The Beatles-founded record label, filed a suit against Apple Computer for trademark infringement.
The suit settled in 1981, with an amount of US$80,000 being paid by Apple computer to The Beatles´ Apple Corps. As a condition of the settlement, Apple Computer agreed to stay out of the music business. The case arose in 1989, again when Apple Corps sued over the Apple IIGS, which included a professional synthesizer chip, claiming violation of the 1981 settlement agreement.
In 1991, another settlement of around US$26.5 million was reached. In September 2003, Apple Computer was sued by Apple Corps again, this time for introducing the iTunes Music Store and the iPod, which Apple Corps believed was a violation of the previous agreement by Apple Computer not to distribute music.
http://beatles.wikia.com/wiki/Apple_vs._Apple_Computers
You don’t need a portfolio of LLLL.com, domains, you need good pronounceable what I call MUPS Made Up PronounceableS.
Plenty of brands are using generics in another way, it runs in contrast to their generic meaning.
Mango.com is not related to the fruit.
Gazelle.com is not related to the animal
Amazon.com is not related to the region.
it’s not strange, the .com will always exist while the new gTLDs will be a big flop 🙂
It was great meeting and speaking to everyone at DomainFest. I want to say something about the new gTLDs.
The new gTLDs are GOOD for the domain industry!
Full disclosure; I have not bought one new gTLD but that doesn’t mean I don’t think you can make money with them. I do very well with premium and hyper domain names that are all dot com. I have been living very well for the last 20 years because of the opportunities domain names have offered me. The new gTLDs are an inevitable progression in the name space. The pyramid just got bigger and will grow even larger. They will make my names much more valuable, but the main reason the new .whatevers are important is because they will help to preserve my and your livelihood in the future.
In my opinion, the search engines have in many ways tried to teach the public to not use domain names. Yes, for the corporations and power barons, theirBrand.com is the exception; but what about everyone else? Remember when Chrome was testing a non URL browser. They wanted only a search bar! If they had done so they would have robbed the many users of direct navigation and those that are trying to set up a persona or business on the net. We could all be using an IP instead. So you have to ask yourself-why are you buying or using a domain name? Anyone with a domain name is a believer in Direct Navigation.
Of course the search engines are there for search but we all know it has grown into something much, much more. At what point do we say “The internet is ours, so don’t get in our way”. This is exactly my point. There is nothing more powerful than to own your own distribution or network. Domain names preserve that “right”. The more domain name merchants, like Donuts or Uniregistry, set up shop and work to preserve their businesses using domain names, the more they empowered the rest of us as a coalition. We all need to work together to preserve our future. Thanks for listening. See you at Vegas TRAFFIC.
Well,
here’s to those which Are STILL believing in the “work-around” .com:
The Progress of newgTLDs is inevitable, this is the law of nature and one has to go along with it and have to welcome the change with open mind. It is a sign of growth and we shall be that ICANN has facilitated by opening up new avenues to expand the internet on its own as per the demand of the users. It will facilitate new players like me to enter the domain investment field easily as we can get some meaningful domains at affordable cost and we can experiment with them for a while, right now it may not be a multi billion dollar industry but ultimately, the more straightforward, short and meaningful new domainnames will rule the Internet. We shall and we can wait patiently till such time
All I see are many many more UDRP’s when companies who have started using the new Gtld’s realise a lot of business ,emails etc are going astray. They cannot , or much more likely do not want to afford to buy .com so what do they do ?. Well they issue a UDRP like their lawyer suggests .Of course bit like buying a lottery ticket they may win tey may lose, but what the hell there is no downside at all.