Change is in the air...

[DryHeat]

Not only I foresee a maturation of and gradual normalization of the domain market but also I see a steady move towards viable and worthy alternatives to .com. In particular, I see a robust growth and acceptance for .US. I view it as having the most potential of all the alternatives to .com. It (.US) has just one limitation (in a way this actually may be its asset) that it specifies its user to be US based. In all other ways, its more attractive in that its scope is even broader than .com, its well known and sounds very familiar and your own (if you're an American) and has one less character than .com. Just before posting this thread, I was looking at the front-page of Appraisals section and there're about as many .US-related threads as for .com; the former being much more live and active than the latter. No, I'm not suggesting that .com is "dead" or anything close to it, just that acceptable alternatives to it have arrived and are here to stay and grow.

 

[mole]

Originally posted by DryHeat
No, I'm not suggesting that .com is "dead" or anything close to it, just that acceptable alternatives to it have arrived and are here to stay and grow.

Truth well told

 

[DotComster]

I might get one or two .US if I'm ever I'm allowed to - but I have yet to buy any country TLD. Guess I'll stick to the dying DotComs for a lil while longer

 

[spietreser]

True, I noticed this trend too. Companies are buying and marketing alternative names to the .coms...

But are you suggesting people to go out and buy more ccTLD's because the .com is too crowded?

 

[Lord Baltimore]

The more these companies market alternative gTLDs the more they reinforce .COM's hold on the market.

My advice is to save your money and buy only COM, NET and ORG.

 

[mole]

Agreed that some ccTLDs are increasingly getting a lot of media playtime in local markets around the world, often more so than .com.

I remember that even in the mid-nineties, the www part of the address was strange to many people.

Alternatives offer people choice at reg fee which was a major problem in the dotcom namespace. What's on the left of the dot is logically more important than what's on the right, provided the extension itself makes sense (which .info and .biz and major country cctlds have). Businesses are willing to make compromises, and increasingly so.

 

[DomainPairs]

I'm sure I'm getting boring with my comments on PayPal, but I think their bad business practices do affect the value of country specific tlds.
As people realise that their advertising is misleading and dishonest and aims to increase their profits at the expense of non-American customer, then the attraction of dealing with American companies starts to slip. If you want to be proud of the .us suffix, you need to clean up these businesses. The foundations of some of these international monopolies are starting to be eroded. Ebay and Microsoft are other examples, and of course it's happening with the domain names as well.

I wonder who will be the first to start an alternative world wide web on a port other than 80?

 

[mole]

Originally posted by DomainPairs
I wonder who will be the first to start an alternative world wide web on a port other than 80?

New.net?

 

[Oceanic]

Most of the "lay" people I know has head of the .cc domain but not of the .us

Did an unofficial survey amonf co workers in a high tech company software r&D department. Whar gives?

 

[GiantDomains]

Originally posted by Oceanic
Most of the "lay" people I know has head of the .cc domain but not of the .us

Did an unofficial survey amonf co workers in a high tech company software r&D department. Whar gives?

What did you say

 

[mole]

Originally posted by doberry
What did you say

Amazing isn't it? I have actually asked so-called Interactive Agency experts on their opinions of .info, and they say "What's that??"

As a developer, I spend quite a bit of money promoting my .infos on Google Adwords. In the mid-long term, I believe this will pay off.

New namespace speculators must accept they are in for the long haul, or sell cheap today