What's the next Domain rush?

[incka]

UK consumers see .co.uk MUCH more than .com in the 'real world' as opposed to the 'virtual world' - evidence:

UK's daily national newspapers:

The Times - timesonline.co.uk
The Sun - thesun.co.uk
The Mirror - mirror.co.uk
Financial Times - ft.com
The Guardian - guardian.co.uk
The Independent - independent.co.uk
The Telegraph - telegraph.co.uk
Daily Mail - dailymail.co.uk
Daily Express - express.co.uk
Morning Star - morrningstaronline.co.uk
Metro - metro.co.uk
Daily Star - dailystar.co.uk
Daily Sport - dailysport.co.uk

Summary: 12 out of 13 use .co.uk, 1 out of 13 use .com.

Major highstreet UK banks:

Barclays - barclays.co.uk
Co-Op - co-operativebank.co.uk
Alliance & Leicester - alliance-leicester.co.uk
Halifax - halifax.co.uk
Bank of Scotland - bankofscotland.co.uk
HSBC -hsbc.co.uk
Lloyds TSB - lloydstsb.com
NatWest - natwest.com
RBS - rbs.co.uk
Yorkshire - yorkshirebank.co.uk
Clydeside - cbonline.co.uk
Abbey Nat - abbey.com
Bradford & Bingley - bradford-bingley.co.uk
Northern Rock - northernrock.co.uk
Woolwich - woolwich.co.uk

Summary: 12 out of 15 use .co.uk, 3 out of 15 use .com

That is simply an assertion without substance:

This shows the UK's biggest extension is dot com by a country mile.

http://google.com/trends?q=.com%2C+....ate=all&sort=0

However, when it comes to actually buying things because we want to pay in Sterling, do not want to pay import duty, or twice the value of item shipping it from America, then we are more inclined to shop at a domestic outlet and will tend to select sites with a .co.uk address. It has nothing to do with generations, it purely cultural and geographical.

Are you suggesting the next generation is going to be dot Mobi? Because if you are, then you haven't a clue what you are talking about.

[dreamking]

interesting stuff but there's the fact that many of the above were due to the com not being available and these companies didn't want to fork out big money for the com in the early days

for instance

dailymail.com is the Charleston daily mail
guardian.com is guardian global glass makers

i think all of these would gladly have bought the com if it had been available and a good few may well pay good money to secure the com - yorkshirebank.com is pending transfer right now - hmm wonder if its the result of legal proceedings as it's parked at sedo right now lol

I'm not slagging off co.uk as it is a very well established cctld and (as you mentioned) prominent with uk based businesses.

for instance

[Rubber Duck]

So, you guys, which extension is a the head of state of a nuclear super-power talking about this week?

[incka]

Is it George Bush talking about .EU seen as though he is in Europe?

Or isn't this a question and I've got this wrong...

[Rubber Duck]

No, it isn't George Bush, and I am a little surprised he has even heard of the EU.

[incka]

Well technically America is the only super power...

I'm guessing you might mean Putin?

[zorag]

UK consumers see .co.uk MUCH more than .com in the 'real world' as opposed to the 'virtual world' - evidence:

I'm not sure I totally agree with this because even in the UK people relate the internet as being predominately .com, it's taken a long time for .co.uk to circle, and yes I agree more users in the UK are increasingly relating a UK company as being "possibly" a .co.uk extension - but they probably try the .com first ..

[Rubber Duck]

Well technically America is the only super power...

I'm guessing you might mean Putin?

Well, you information is out of date on both counts. Putin is no longer head of state, and American has been shown impotetant to project conventional military power much beyond its own shores. But yes, you have the right country.

http://info.nic.ru/st/1/out_2050.shtml

http://translate.google.co.uk/transl...F8&sl=ru&tl=en

In Moscow, opened 10 - th World Congress of Russian press. The participants of the event will discuss problems of development of Russian-speaking global information space and protecting the Russian language. This time Congress will bring together representatives from 65 countries. All over the world to speak Russian more than three hundred million people. According to the spread of Russian language is the fourth largest in the world.
Congress opened Dmitry Medvedev, the president of Russia. In opening remarks, RIA-Novosti, and he raised the topic of a possible delegation of our country Cyrillic domain. RF. "We must do our utmost to achieve the assignment of domain names in Cyrillic. This is the symbolic significance of Russian language, and we have good chances to make an appropriate decision" - said Medvedev, responding to questions from the participants of World Congress of Russian press.
If a corporation ICANN approve the introduction of IDN upper levels, then Russia could become one of the first countries which will be delegated Cyrillic own national domain. However, Russian blast zone quickly appear only in the event that its creation would support the idea of the Russian Internet community.
Thus, the opinions of Internet users is designed to learn the company's shares RU-CENTER "Support Russia, will vote in favour. RF." June 3, ended a custom stage a vote. To the question "Would you like to, that Russia was delegated Cyrillic top-level domain. RF?" 70, 4% of users answered "yes", and only 29.6 - "no".

[bwhhisc]

Well, you information is out of date on both counts. Putin is no longer head of state, and American has been shown impotetant to project conventional military power much beyond its own shores. But yes, you have the right country.

http://info.nic.ru/st/1/out_2050.shtml

http://translate.google.co.uk/transl...F8&sl=ru&tl=en

To cut to the chase...what RubberDuck is linking to is the jockeying of the Russian politicians for the eventual rollout of the new Russian .рф extension. It appears it could be one of the first IDN.IDN (foreign language idn urls, coupled with foreign language ccTLD) to come on line within the next year.

[Rubber Duck]

It is probably also the only one that will involve the formation of a New Registry, so this is the main event as far as speculation is concerned. It seems highly unlikely that most major ccTLDs are going to actually run two versions of their ccTLD. Chinese ccTLDs are are already linked and Japan and India have already sent pretty clear signals that they will take a similar approach.

[dodo1]

I also think that ccTLDs offer great opportunities. In Germany, for example, people prefer the local .de ccTLD to .com, and hyphenated .de domains are used quite frequently, too (as opposed to hyphenated .com domains, which have very little value).

Speaking of the UK, I've had the impression that .co.uk has been very popular with corporate domain owners over there as well. And China's .cn top-level domain has seen significant growth lately.

[staffjam]

What are your thoughts on L-L.net and L-L.org?
The L-L.coms have had a massive move in recent years - could it be the turn of the other extensions now?

[Rubber Duck]

The German market is an interesting one. It is one of the few where dot Com has been almost rejected in favour of a ccTLD and where IDN seem to have similar status to ASCII.

Not really sure what you mean by opportunity. With over 12 Million dot De registered already, it would seem to me that most of the major opportunities are long gone. It would seem to me that dot DE will provide good investment opportunities in the secondary market, much better than dot Com, as the prices are not yet highly inflated.

And before I accused of promoting dot DE or German IDN for my own benefit here. No, I don't have any of these!

I also think that ccTLDs offer great opportunities. In Germany, for example, people prefer the local .de ccTLD to .com, and hyphenated .de domains are used quite frequently, too (as opposed to hyphenated .com domains, which have very little value).

Speaking of the UK, I've had the impression that .co.uk has been very popular with corporate domain owners over there as well. And China's .cn top-level domain has seen significant growth lately.

[dodo1]

What are your thoughts on L-L.net and L-L.org?
The L-L.coms have had a massive move in recent years - could it be the turn of the other extensions now?

I've never really liked L-L.com domains, and personally I wouldn't invest in L-L.net/.org.

The problem with L-L, in my opinion, is that there are very few potential corporate buyers and that demand is largely driven by domain speculators, just as has been the case in the LLLL market in 2007. Even if a company could use the L-L as an acronym for its company name (e.g. Morgan Stanley = MS), it would also desperately need the LL.com domain, because otherwise it would send tons of typo traffic to that domain instead of its inferior hyphenated L-L domain name.

Not really sure what you mean by opportunity. With over 12 Million dot De registered already, it would seem to me that most of the major opportunities are long gone. It would seem to me that dot DE will provide good investment opportunities in the secondary market, much better than dot Com, as the prices are not yet highly inflated.

Yes, I was referring to opportunities in the secondary market. High-quality .DE domains are much cheaper than comparable .com domains, and I expect them to increase in value rather quickly in the near future. In addition, the economic slowdown hasn't hit Europe as hard as the United States yet, so local buyers currently seem more willing to invest within the EU.

You're right about IDNs. They have become relatively popular in Germany and I don't see any reason why they couldn't replace their uncommon non-IDN versions in the future [e.g. Bücher.de (=books in English) could replace or complement Buecher.de].

[Rubber Duck]

L-L.com, are obviously better than L-L-L.com but all these dashed Acronyms are in my view registered by people in denial that they have missed the boat. I rank thing this way

Excellent

L.com/net/org/Info
LL.com/net/org/Info


Good

LLL.com/net/org/info

Possible

LLLL.com L-L.com

Train Crash

LLLLL.com LLLL.net/org/info or NNNN.com any LNLN.com or LLNN.com or LL-L.com or L-L-L.com

[Dr Nump]

CVCVC.com or pronouncable 5 letters dot com will be the next.

[Rubber Duck]

It would seem that ASCII generics are just about exhausted to the extent that they are ever going to be commercially viable is any credible extension.

From here on in it probably is going to be about brandability, which means short and pronouncable. With all the four letters gone in dot com, which is really the only credible option when the choice becomes so wide, 5 letter pronouncable dot coms do seem like the next open prairie. However, companies are not ever going to go beyond the threshold of what they regard as a lot of money for these names. There are just too many of them, and if they are really serious they are going to go for shorter made up words. You will probably need to network with advertising agencies to make good money on these. They generally do the branding thing for larger businesses, and to brand something meaningless from scratch probably does require the resources of a larger company.

[DomainMagnate]

So how about idns?

[domaingenius]

I think that IDN's are going to be a growth area as more and more devloping countries expand their networks and citizens come online.

DG

[DNWizardX9]

RD when do you expect LLLLLL.com to be a hit?