Hi Azooza,
There is a significant difference between Centralnic domains (e.g. us.com, uk.com, eu.com, etc.,.) and New.net domains (aka "the offbeat names available at Registerfly"... e.g. .shop, .sex, .club, etc.,.).
New.net states that their domains can be accessed by "more than 180,710,501 users world-wide" Although I don't contest their claim and although that is a lot of people... it is still much less than the entire Internet community.
The latest estimate I could find placed total "World Internet Users at 604,111,719 (That is a 2002 estimate and probably much higher today).*
What that means is that at least two/thirds of Internet users worldwide can not reach New.net domains today. They must first download & install a special proprietary plugin.
It's my view that this presents a difficult challenge to registrants like you and me who will often have to tell potential web visitors that our web site can not be reached unless those visitors download and install the plugin first...
This is kind of a catch 22. Your visitors can't reach your site until they get the plugin... and often they can't get the plugin until they reach your site. One can go to New.net's site to get the plugin and there are some large ISPs like Earthlink that support the plugin at the ISP level. Or, I understand that there are some programs similar to Kazaa that automatically distribute and install the plugin as part of their program (that's an issue for another day). All of this seems to be an unnecessary hassle to me.
It is possible that New.net domains will become more omnipresent and easier to visit over time, but that is not the case today and most people who register domains want to do something with them right away.
You have to give that company credit for their persistence and drive. They have persisted in the face of much opposition.
But the bottom line is that New.net domains can only be reached by 1/3rd of Internet users right now.
Centralnic domains are reachable by all 604,111,719 + Internet users right now.
This is because Centralnic domains are sub-domains of .com (technically "us.com") and they work exactly the same. They operate in the existing root structure of the domain name system using well accepted standards that have been in existence since the beginning of the Internet. Many schools and government entities have used domains and standards similar to Centralnic's for years. Think of
http://www.chino.k12.ca.us or
http://www.dced.state.ak.us . These sites all work fine for the WWW as well as for e-mail using the same standards (admittedly, they are a bit cumbersome on the fingers).
Centralnic domains like us.com or uk.com should not be compared to New.net domains at all. They are very different animals.
Once again, sorry for the long post.
J.A.
* source -
http://www.odci.gov/cia/publications/factbook/geos/xx.html#Comm
