The movement is on! Google has greatly helped all new gTLD’s and there are many mainstream media sites covering gTLD’s daily. This is really great news in general for the domain industry as a whole and clearly the gTLD’s!
Although many of these stories relate to .com when talking about the new gTLD’s, like a new one today from the WashingtonPost.com with a title of:
“Who Needs .com? Domains When .Vegas, .PR, .NYC are Trending”
The story highlights several companies using gTLD’s like Republic.Bike, yet states: “The company uses republic.bike in ads. It still uses its original domain, republicbike.com; when people type in republic.bike, they’re taken to the “.com” site.”
Ok, so really, who needs .com? Republic.Bike does because, well Republic.Bike goes to RepublicBike.com as they stated? *Digging into it a bit further and the Republic.Bike site is a stand alone site, but has several links to its .com website like the About page and the companies logo for an example on the top of the site. Maybe the writer of the story was a little confused based on the quote mentioned above?
I do like the fact that new gTLD’s are giving a lot of people options. Similar to what many companies have done with owning more than 1 domain / website prior to new gTLD’s and these were often .com domain names.
Domain names are powerful and they provide amazing tracking options and so much more. Plus, you are not just limited to one domain! I have raved about domain names for YEARS and with the new gTLD’s it is almost like they have sparked things that have been available for over 30+ years.
Another “trending” extension as mentioned in the Washington Post article is .PR, which states Quinn Public Relations firm of New York is redirecting QuinnAndCo.com to Quinn.pr . .pr isn’t “new” and that is stated in the article but it is actually a ccTLD (country code top level domain) of Puerto Rico that was introduced in 1989. The catch, it cost $1,369 to register a .pr domain name Per Year at 101Domain.com according to its site.
Is .PR “trending”? That is something that would be speculative at best and heavily relating to the registration / annual renewal costs IMO. Add in the fact that .PR domain names are not live registrations, as it takes 7-10 days to register one during general availability. In general, .pr domains are used by less than 0.1% of websites. Not sure I would call that trending.
Also mentioned in the WashingtonPost.com article is .Vegas which according to Ntldstats.com currently holds about 15,000 .vegas domains registered.
Quoted in the article: “WHY “.VEGAS”?: Using “.vegas” will help the firm be more visible when someone searches for Las Vegas-area accountants with specialties like helping businesses with 401(k) retirement plans, says Shannon Hiller, the firm’s marketing director. Also, the firm was unable to get names like taxaccountant.com. The “.vegas” addresses take visitors to the “.com” site, which also serves the Salt Lake City office.”
Another redirect to .com?
So, yes… almost everybody in the story “needs .com” as the majority of the domain names mentioned in the story, redirect to… well, .com domain names?
I personally like new gTLD domain names because it gives people options. I didn’t always feel this way prior, but things change over time and I have seen several companies do really well with the new gTLD’s. Search engines are giving them some loving and ranking them well, but that one big hill to climb remains. Getting the general public to see republic.bike and know it IS a domain name. Adding www.republic.bike helps, but .com is just so natural, that even I end up typing things like republic.bike.com, which in the end is a sub-domain on bike.com.
* I updated the story with some more information, because the writer of the story stated visitors to Repubic.Bike: “they’re taken to the .com site”. I took that quote as meaning that the domain name redirects to RepublicBike.com, but in fact, the Republic.Bike domain is a stand alone website but with several links to RepublicBike.com.
Zoch-here’s one small example. Yesterday we hand reg’d FloodInsurance.xyz . Who knows what that name would cost in the .com-it’s just a matter of what a major would pay for it. Anyone that’s saying this Google news doesn’t matter is simply not paying attention. Will these overcome .com ,I seriously doubt it,but the .com ship has left the dock for most new companies.
I used to own FloodInsurance.XYZ, let it drop in June because only the federal government (FEMA) sells flood insurance. Having flood insurance in the US means you write a check to FEMA once a year. Put it on the parking platform, the ads are for car insurance. Maybe flood insurance is privatized outside the US where the domain might be worth more.
Yes, flood insurance is privatised outside the USA, though outside the USA, ccTLD’s tend to take precedence
It’s like comparing Walmart to Nordstrom’s when shopping for clothing. If you don’t have much money you buy from Walmart (but in reality, you’d much rather buy from Nordstom’s).
With the new gs your buying Walmart quality at nordstrom prices
The gTLD vs .com comparison is the wrong way to look at this.
The real comparison is which could work better (a) name.com, (b) name.bike, (c) name.nyc, (d) name.xyz ?
Personally I think that the answer could be any of the above except (d). xyz is (again my opinion) nothing more than a weaker dot com. It has no real meaning or substance. Sure people will say it’s the end of the alphabet, or it sounds cool, or whatever… but it is still a .blah…
Depending on the “name”:
(1) name.com might be the best choice because it has history and recognition automatically because of the tld
(2) name.bike (or name.meaning) might be the best choice because the right of the dot provides something descriptive, meaningful and related (potentially this could make it perform much better than the .com equivalent in terms of branding and possibly SEO). Therefore name.meanings have the possibility to blow the name.com out of the water in years to come.
(3) name.nyc (or other geo) provide a massive opportunity for branding and awareness. Again the possibility to outperform .coms in terms of marketing, local connections, and being something new.
.com can never provide a local meaning nor can it add anything of value to the left of the dot other than domains used to all end with .com
I’m not invested in gtlds (I do have some .nyc’s), I hate .xyz’s but appreciate that they are helping to push the door open for other options.
I think .london should have gone with .lon or .ldn, so length is an issue.
.photo could be part of a great name, but again in both of these cases we need to look at domains and not the tlds in isolation. For example jsmith.photo, jsmith.xyz, jsmith.london, jsmith.com… If I was a photographer called jsmith, then I think jsmith.photo is the best name for me, even ahead of jsmith.photography. jsmith.photo is snappy and meaningful and it still respects the tradition of the tld being shorter.
The reality is, no matter which side of the fence one may be on regarding the new gTLD’s, fan or foe, is that we have 20 years of consumer behavior of typing in everything. dot com. And as savvy as some may be about adapting to change and new web addresses, it will be many years before a large number of internet users realize there is any other way to use the internet.
Does anyone here still know someone who’s email is still using xxxxx@aol.com? After 2 decades I still know people who do.
Actually republic.bike goes directly to republic.bike
It’s “masked”. Hover over a link and you will see it’s RepublicBike.com
I’m pretty sure that this is because of them being worried about SEO implications. The very fact that they are masking it to look like republic.bike means that mentally they are happier with that ‘brand’. So I’m not sure about everybody ‘needing’ the .com, except only in the fear about SEO loss.
I looked further into this and it appears I was mistaken. Although the logo and about pages on the top of the site on Republic.Bike link the RepublicBike.com domain name, many of the other links are directly on Republic.Bike sections of the site.
Upon scrolling down and when the menu bar slides in / appears, all the links in the menu section are then linked to the RepublicBike.com domain name. Bike For You, Bikes For Biz, Bikes For Kids.
So the domain is not redirecting nor is it masked. There just happens to be a misstatement in the Washington Post article and many links to RepublicBike.com on the Republic.Bike site.
Answer (to WP question):
You do IDIOTS. 🙂
look at your own URL.
COM mercial!
for everything else look at the present (The lsit is to long to pst now..) and upcoming rolling tumbleweeds…
This is why , and I have said this once or so before, the more .com’s that remain in the hands of people that
are NOT fully using them and advertising them to the Public at large the less chance it has of survival. It would pay some of the other owners of large stocks of .com to let them out “into the wild” to legitimate end users) so that they do become/stay “The” tld to own on the minds of the public and the next generation as well. Otherwise .com may at some point become a museum piece.
There are more than enough .com’s being used by very successful corporations, bloggers, and others to permanently solidify .com’s place as the preeminent domain extension. To argue this is to act the fool.
It is actually the reverse, the new GTLDs need end users to take them up, COM is well established
I have the money now. So I treat myself to a solid car, with a great rating, 5 stars on reliability, performance. Similarly, I treat myself to the same and I buy .com.
When I was struggling college student and starving artist, I was happy to just have wheels. Similarly, I’d probably have to opt for a less valuable and risky extension, like .xyz, and hope my situation would improve, so I could one day move up to .me, .tv., .io, or the jackpot, .com.
People like options, but they don’t like to be overwhelmed with hundreds of choices.
I hear people say anything “domain-related” in the news is good for the domain industry. True — if you’re an IP attorney, domain consultant, brand consultant, domain blogger or an amazing salesperson (the type that could sell heaters in the deserts of Sudan).
The reality: many investors in these uncertain and new extensions will lose lots of money. If you’re a super star coder, and you can create a crazy popular app, sure, launch it on .xyz or .wtf or .omg or .lmfao — but not too many people have the ability to do this. And if that app becomes so popular, and the angels descend to shower you with funding, one of the first things the angels will demand — “get the .com now. You’re in the big leagues. “
Yep.
.me and .tv already seem like failures. They might be revived with the wave of gtlds but who knows. I think the very fact that there is a wave of new tlds benefits them and adds more inevitability that some of them will stick. I think that if .me and .tv had been released during the last year then they would have done much better than being released in isolation.
That author did not have a clue. What a stupid article. The gtlds will sink any site to which they are attached.
GTLD = Good To Lose Dollars
Why does the ngtld crowd continue to sell the idea that the big boys (G, yahoo, Amazon’s, etc of the world) will lead the dot whatever charge? That’s not how things work. The big boys follow the customer. Every company feels that they need a social media presence by being on Twitter, FB, etc because the consumer (everyday person) is. Everyday guy doesn’t follow what IBM, G, yahoo, does. Yahoo, Microsoft, G, Amazon follows what “everyday guy” does… they go where he goes. So what if G bought an xyz name. That means Mr small business owner, college student, yuppy, teen, and my mother in law wants an xyz name now? I don’t think so.
Then why did .XYZ registrations surge from 3K/per day to 20K in 42 hours after Google’s announcement? Consumer awareness for new TLDs sky rocketed in the wake of ABC.XYZ and average users are much more comfortable settling in the new TLD space knowing that brands such as Google, Barclays, McDonald’s, General Motors, etc. have done so.
Consumers are quickly becoming familiar with the new choices they have and the .COM monopoly is collapsing.
@ Peter.
Dot xyz registrations spiked after the Google news because they were all bought by domainers trying to make a quick buck. Not because dot xyz suddenly gained recognition by the public.
lol
Bingo.
@Peter
“Then why did .XYZ registrations surge from 3K/per day to 20K in 42 hours after Google’s announcement?”
Herd mentality. Group Think. The lottery ticket rush — and just like lottery tickets, the .xyz domains were a buck a piece on registrars.
Keep in mind — amazing salespersons can sell and flip just about anything. I don’t have that gift. But I’m very good at selling high quality products that have metrics and comps.
Negari started selling real estate in Los Angeles when he was in his teens. Real estate markets like LA, Miami, NYC, the Bay Area are cut-throat, so no doubt he’s earned lots of sales cred.
Exactly !
Wish mainstream journalists brought some fresh perspective. Stoking the nTLD versus COM, smouldering heap, serves no purpose…
Fast forward 5 years, COM and select nTLDS are seen happily coexisting for “address labeling”…while internet content gets fragmented, search gets super personalized and commerce …..well drones, hyper local JIT delivery ….you get the idea …just IMHO.
Happy ending, er, to getting the .com you really want, even if it costs $55 K more, 5 years later in 2012
http://www.forbes.com/sites/zalmiduchman/2015/08/18/how-i-blew-50-grand-on-my-journey-for-the-perfect-domain-name/
Steve
That story you quoted is about a freshdiet.com which we sold to him
Elliot wrote about it the other day
Thanks, Mike —
Great sale. I believe $100 K for freshdiet.com is a fair price, with those key words. I thought the original offer of 20 K was a very low offer.
We developed an app on FB and the iPhone that was very popular in 2010-2011. We owned the .net, the .org, and we had, like “freshdiet”, the____.com.
We had no where near the revenues that FreshDiet had/have, but we would have purchased _____.com for $100 K, but the owner wanted over $1 million. (don’t worry – the owner was not you, Frank or Rick) — long story short — there were no winners here — we didn’t get the domain, and the technology got acquired. And that domain is now for sale for less than $50 K
One of the best, and most comprehensive, analysis I’ve seen is the one on Circle ID that has six scenarios describing which scenarios disrupt the exiting .com monopoly.
The logic for each scenario is sound.
Summary, .com will be the preferred TLD of choice if it’s unregistered. However, if it’s owned by a domain investor that is trying to sell it for thousands more than the original registration price, this is when the new gTLDs become disruptive to the .com monopoly. And the more new gTLDs get registered and used, the more the general public will start to accept them, and the snowball effect, ending .coms dominance will have begun.
Of course, personally, I believe once the .Brands start major advertising campaigns, like during the SuperBowl – the new gTLD revolution will really start to take off.
http://www.circleid.com/posts/20150819_do_new_gtlds_disrupt_com/
I agree, new gTLDs will open an entire new internet, but I still think that having a .com will be almost compulsory for a international corporation, languages are diffrent, words, acronyms, but .com is simple and the same world wide… Oppose to a new gTLD that is only know in English so very well known in any other western alphabet…. By default the .com will still be the extension of preference by any transnational company…