IDN.mobi agreement signed in China! To go LIVE summer 2009

[snicksnack]

I am driving to my office everyday and look at the billboards here and haven't seen IDN.com/.cn also the ads on the busses are not IDN, but I will look harder. I am sure IDN here in China will have it's place. One of the problems was, that IDN.cn domains were not promoted at 1 RMB, they charged the regular price, thus lot of people / companies didn't go for the IDNs.

Also in thailand IDN makes sense, but it is to difficult to register .co.th domains as there are too many restrictions.

[Wot]

I am driving to my office everyday and look at the billboards here and haven't seen IDN.com/.cn also the ads on the busses are not IDN, but I will look harder. I am sure IDN here in China will have it's place. One of the problems was, that IDN.cn domains were not promoted at 1 RMB, they charged the regular price, thus lot of people / companies didn't go for the IDNs.

Not looking in the same places that I did then.

And we both know that very few people/companies in China, and elsewhere, are aware that they can use their own language to access the internet via their browser.

I showed some of the staff at my Beijing hotel what they could do with IDN - they were stunned and excited!

It will take a little time but it will happen and will runaway like a train without brakes.

[snicksnack]

do you see an opeing of .co.th ? I mean less restrictions. I remeber like 3-4 years ago I was talking to the people from the NIC and at that time they were discussing to release .th but it never happened.

[Gerry]

I guess in your opinion countries like Niger, Columbia, Cameroon, Oman, should give up their extension, as they might be typo extensions. So should Sweden or Spain give up their extension?

Again, first grade rhetoric.

No one said anyone should give up anything.

You pumped up .cm as being a great typo for .com and .cn.

If that is the selling point, then I wish you all the luck in the world.

It will take a little time but it will happen and will runaway like a train without brakes.

A 21st century internet.

[phio]

do you see an opeing of .co.th ? I mean less restrictions. I remeber like 3-4 years ago I was talking to the people from the NIC and at that time they were discussing to release .th but it never happened.

I think thai IDN.IDN will come to Thailand within a year or two.
(maybe even sooner)

Right now you can register ThaiIDN.com and .net and a couple of other extension.

[Wot]

do you see an opeing of .co.th ? I mean less restrictions. I remeber like 3-4 years ago I was talking to the people from the NIC and at that time they were discussing to release .th but it never happened.

Thai's have barely gotten used to ascii.com /.co.th etc let alone IDN - a relatively small market that I think will take a long time to mature.

I have drastically reduced my Thai idn.com portfolio and concentrated on China IDN.

As for .mobi, I have dumped /sold most of mine and will not be partaking of the idn.mobi rush of any kind.

[snicksnack]

I saw a couple of thai IDN.com at ND last year, they had decent traffic

[memmst]

98% of this forum are in for a real shock when IDN and new gTLDs are released.

I continue to read too much rhetoric and advice from a decade ago.

It is as if some people are frozen in time.

Make way for the new internet.

You will grow hair on the palm of your hand before you will get most to really listen and then maybe even understand what you are trying to say in regards to idn domains.

Keep ignoring all those weird idn posts, we need natives to keep regging.

[phio]

Thai's have barely gotten used to ascii.com /.co.th etc let alone IDN - a relatively small market that I think will take a long time to mature.

I think this will rapidly change. Because their language is soo unique, IDNs are a very natural fit for them.

I have drastically reduced my Thai idn.com portfolio and concentrated on China IDN.

I may have picked up a few of those...If I had a better feel for Chinese, I would be on that bandwagon too,
I regged alot, but made many mistakes...oh well, holding on to the good ones.

[Wot]

I think this will rapidly change. Because their language is soo unique, IDNs are a very natural fit for them.
I may have picked up a few of those...If I had a better feel for Chinese, I would be on that bandwagon too,
I regged alot, but made many mistakes...oh well, holding on to the good ones.

I still have 50+

[Gerry]

Only time will tell if some are successful for me.

I spent time researching and working with some Chinese natives. It was actually quite fun learning some Chinese, Japanese, Arabic, and Hindi. I was amazed at the word roots and origins. Many co-workers were Filipino. I had no idea much of their history and language was based on Spanish origin.

[Rubber Duck]

Some interesting points but you seem to omitted or just not recognized that IDN can and do come as dot coms. Dot Com is one of the most recognized extensions in Asia, often more so than the local ccTLDs. It is especially popular with large corporations. Furthermore, it is highly likely although not certain that most IDN extensions will just be mirrors of existing ccTLDs and gTLDs. That probably means that the most valuable IDN.IDN have to a large extent already been registered. You also need to understand that there are some pretty arduous restrictions on a lot of ccTLD registrations. Those that are thinking that this will be a huge opportunity may just learn that this still is a huge opportunity but was a really massive opportunity was some time ago when you could still pick up the good one for reg fee.

Three reasons:
Traffic
Traffic
Traffic

In many instances, traffic exists as there were no options.

Give people options and what happens?

You pointed out .nl. Take extremely popular ccTLD's like .nl, .de, .jp.

There may be a decrease in traffic (slight, moderate, or large) to the .com once a site is up in those extensions. Notice, I said SITE, not a parked page.

But one of the biggest areas not talked about by anyone is - those sites are now getting traffic the dot com never had or will ever get.

I have not seen any studies in this area. An extremely successful ccTLD site is now getting the traffic that the .com will not get. It may actually be new, un-referred, type in traffic.

In time, I think people in domaining will begin to see things from a different perspective. It is not:

How can an IDN compete with a .com?

It will be:

How can a .com compete with an IDN?

or even a ccTLD.

When I look at the shear numbers of people in China and India, we are talking about billions of people. That is millions of daily searches going on that all of a sudden will be directed/diverted to a native script in Bengali, Hindi, or Mandarin.

Those two countries along have nearly 3 billion people. India is expected to overtake China in population by 2015 thanks, in part, to China's one child policy.

When you combine nationalistic pride with a ccTLD, you have a recipe for success.

When you combine a ccTLD with a government decree that .cn will be the ONLY permissable TLD used by a country within that country, then you have a huge, HOLY COW!

I still maintain my position that I look for China to break totally away from the connected world by declaring its own root servers and having its own internet. There are too many signals that are showing me this.

It's funny, nearly 4 or 5 years ago, people on domain forums were saying to me (in response to some of my threads),

Why should I care what happens in China?

Who cares about IDN's. It'll never happen.

ccTLD's will never amount to anything.


If you just look back for a minute and look at what has happened within the past 5 years, 3 years, 1 year, 6 months, one month ago in terms of technology and internet usage - it is astounding.

Now we are at a tipping point where, instead of waiting for the technology to catch up to us - all these new ccTLDs, IDN's, gTLDs are about to be released creating a very cluttered and competitive space - suddenly it will be technology having to catch up to us (internet usage) to try and sort things out.

[Gerry]

Some interesting points but you seem to omitted or just not recognized that IDN can and do come as dot coms. Dot Com is one of the most recognized extensions in Asia, often more so than the local ccTLDs. It is especially popular with large corporations. Furthermore, it is highly likely although not certain that most IDN extensions will just be mirrors of existing ccTLDs and gTLDs. That probably means that the most valuable IDN.IDN have to a large extent already been registered. You also need to understand that there are some pretty arduous restrictions on a lot of ccTLD registrations. Those that are thinking that this will be a huge opportunity may just learn that this still is a huge opportunity but was a really massive opportunity was some time ago when you could still pick up the good one for reg fee.

If I did not mention it, chances are it was not brought up. No time to go back and review this entire thread.

I do recall mentioning and pointing out only a couple of mine that are doing very well in traffic and PPC, one a .net and the other a .com. That was just two of many that consistently do me justice parking at sedo. Surprisingly, sedo does not allow the sale of these IDN's in some native scripts yet they do good parking.

[bwhhisc]

Surprisingly, sedo does not allow the sale of these IDN's in some native scripts yet they do good parking.

Been a mystery for quite some time with little or no comment from sedo. Sadly, despite the complaints and letters written to them, SEDO has allowed the sales of mixed script IDNs that have no legitimate purpose, other than to dupe a few unknowing fools into paying an outrageous price for worthless garbage. Not sure they have changed this policy yet...but hopefully that will happen soon.

[radioz]

In the US, at least, if you mention a domain name to someone in person that doesn't end in .COM, .NET, or .ORG, you get a sort of blank, questioning stare about 50% of the time. I own my share of new extension names but the demand for domains other than in the primary original three and some significant regional country codes (think .CO.UK, .DE, .CN, and a few others) is not high nor are most of them badly needed. God bless the lovers of the .ME extension but I have yet to see a notable site using this extension despite the absurd prices being paid for many of them. I do see some use of .BIZ, .US, and .INFO by small businesses in our area but I am sure that their names are typed in with .COM attached by many of their customers. FOX News is using .MOBI some, so maybe there is a little hope but a lot of people in the domaining business should hold onto there wallet for msote of this stuff.

[Gerry]

Been a mystery for quite some time with little or no comment from sedo. Sadly, despite the complaints and letters written to them, sedo has allowed the sales of mixed script IDNs that have no legitimate purpose, other than to dupe a few unknowing fools into paying an outrageous price for worthless garbage. Not sure they have changed this policy yet...but hopefully that will happen soon.

Very well stated.

There was a thread on this matter not too long ago where IDN's were legitimate IDN's were mistakenly deleted from Sedo Parking accounts.

Honestly, I think it boils down to no one at Sedo being able to recognize and interpret non roman characters.

They do not offer them for sale because they have no idea what they mean and how to market them. Point is, there is a market and a demand so why ignore it?

On the other hand, although I know what my IDN's mean, I sometimes get emails composed entirely in Chinese. These may even be legit offers for the domain. I hope not - I can't read them and delete them.

[Rubber Duck]

We worked out a long time ago sedo were a complete bunch of dickheads. Move on. Don't waste your energy.

Christ even Rick Schwartz is coming around at lightening speed compared with that bunch of dullards.

Very well stated.

There was a thread on this matter not too long ago where IDN's were legitimate IDN's were mistakenly deleted from sedo Parking accounts.

Honestly, I think it boils down to no one at Sedo being able to recognize and interpret non roman characters.

They do not offer them for sale because they have no idea what they mean and how to market them. Point is, there is a market and a demand so why ignore it?

On the other hand, although I know what my IDN's mean, I sometimes get emails composed entirely in Chinese. These may even be legit offers for the domain. I hope not - I can't read them and delete them.

[bwhhisc]

On the other hand, although I know what my IDN's mean, I sometimes get emails composed entirely in Chinese. These may even be legit offers for the domain. I hope not - I can't read them and delete them.

You probably know the trick, but easy and painless to cut and paste the whole paragraph into google.com/translate and hit "Chinese to English" for half decent translations. Same site will also translate entire websites from language to language.

Some legit offers are being tossed out lately for Chinese IDN so maybe worth a few minutes to explore emails that look legit. There is a market out there, evidenced by some Chinese IDN sales in the xx,xxx range.