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closed Dot Com will always be king????

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izopod

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My take on all this....

One thing you need to do when assessing (current or future) values of domains is to first take off your speculation hat. In doing that you will get a clearer picture of where names will be in 2 or 3 years down the road.....(izopod takes off hat).

Com's current value comes from it being the "first thought of". If you told someone to go to DNForum...without giving an extension, they'd most likely type in the com version (at this moment in time). End of point. To argue that .net is next, then .info, then blah, blah is futile. Some of the 'net's and info's and biz's do get some natural type-ins if they are ultra generic, but essentially these names all have to duke it out into the SE's.

The advantage that .biz and .info have over .net is that they really haven't been branded yet, as they are so new. Both TLDs will over the course of the next few years will be branded either positively or negatively. .Net has been branded negatively whether you like it or not. That is a fact. Also just because Microsoft likes something doesn't mean that everyone else likes it. If you go through the WHOIS companies are letting their dot net's go. Some are buying .biz and .info to give them a try. For the reason stated above. They haven't (as of yet) been branded positively or negative. Time will tell.

One thing that I look for is what edge do dot biz/.info have. Dot info is a no brainer for SOME domains. Those domains (travel/landmarks) will be of great value. It's most likely full-time "job" will be to promote causes, specific products, events, etc, etc. Biz is synonomous with "business". No one can dispute that. So the next question is who will use these domains. Ah...businesses??? What percent of the web sites are business as opposed to just info....I am guessing but I would say at least 70%. What other benefits will biz have. According to Neulevel, they have a product coming out that will give "businesses" an edge in the SE's....Hmmm....70% of businesses on the internet....The name is synonmous with "business"....Neulevel is going to give it an edge...and ICANN most likely will not come out with another com or .biz type name....I would say biz will do extremely well, if you put all the pieces of the puzzle together.

The million dollar question will .com always be king? No one knows, or can say FOR SURE. TO say com will always be king is like saying the patent office must close because there is nothing left to patent.

Last thought: "Marketing" is driving the internet at the moment--hence the need to use dot com (.biz/.info are too new), and I have a good feeling "Marketing" will drive the future of the internet. You can answer some of your own "dot com will be king" questions if you look at where Marketing will be in two to three years. side note: Not to forget Dot us but IT will take hold in the US...give it time, for the reasons outlined above. National identity will drive the marketing for the domain. Oooh...there is that million dollar word again: "Marketing".

izopod
 

dtobias

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If it's a noncommercial site you're looking for, do you still first expect it to be .com?
 

Lats

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Excluding the question marks, the subject line says it all.


Lats...
 

Guest
imo, theres more to .com being as strong as it is due to it being just first thought of.

the sheer volume of weight of all the combined advertising being done for domains in .com by the entities with the largest budgets is collosal. We have a situation where theres nothing broke that needs fixing.

i agree .info works well in isolated theory for certain sites, but namespace doesn't run in a vacuum and outside influences like marketing roi factor in any decision made. I expect we'll see some good .info sites over time as there are many talented developers out there who don't have the money or desire to pay corporate level prices for the domains for their sites. But if the sites grow at some point they are going to have to make the transition from hobby webmaster to proper corporate thinking - and thats when .com comes on the radar in a big way if you look at it in cold commercial terms.
 

mole

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Originally posted by safesys
But if the sites grow at some point they are going to have to make the transition from hobby webmaster to proper corporate thinking - and thats when .com comes on the radar in a big way if you look at it in cold commercial terms.

Not necessarily. The webmaster who developed the .info site and succeeded would only be convinced more of its value. One of the hardest things in the web today in most major categories like travel is to be seen as differentiated from the rest of the wannabe riff-raff, to be a little 'special', if you will.

You don't have to be IBM to exist on the web. Tens of thousands of nimble entreprenuers venture out and develop businesses on the web each year without being shackled by the cold commercial antiquity of big business thinking.

Random type-in value (something .com could be useful for) will eventually fade into the woodworks as a waste of time as better SE, mega-portal, and mega-directory alternatives start to take over the divided and fragmented channel we call the WWW.
 

Omni

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Originally posted by mole
Random type-in value (something .com could be useful for) will eventually fade into the woodworks as a waste of time as better SE, mega-portal, and mega-directory alternatives start to take over the divided and fragmented channel we call the WWW.
I don't quite agree with this statement and think type-in value and SE etc ay grow together at the same time. Can't support my argument though.
 

Guest
Originally posted by Omni
I don't quite agree with this statement and think type-in value and SE etc ay grow together at the same time. Can't support my argument though.

Agreed. The type-in continues to be used. And of even greater importance is the offline-advertising related "type-in," where a consumer hears or sees a URL for a company they want to e-connect with, and they default to the ".com."

No business that can afford offline advertising can afford to have their advertising dollars bleed into another business--competitor or not--because of the ".com" mnemonic default."

And as for "classic" type-ins...even if only 10% of searches are done this way--even 5%!--that's still a heck of a lot of business from 150 million Americans online, not to mention the hundreds of millions of other surfers in the world.

There is no "antiquity" in this business analyisis: this is the contemporary state of namespace.

Miles
 

Duke

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Dot Com will always be king

This kind of thinking makes me very uncomfortable because I fell into a similar trap that cost me over $200,000. A few years ago when the stock market was booming my tech holdings went through the roof. Everyone said tech is king - nothing else matters. It is a whole new world. Diversification was an outmoded idea best left for losers only. I bought into it and transferred my non-tech holdings into still more tech. Looked great for awhile and I was on the verge of being wealthy and retired early. We all know what happened.

I don't know if any of these other TLDs will take off but I am becoming more inclined to put a little money into them as one or two of those extensions might just provide the best return on investment looking a few years down the road.

I still buy mostly .com and it is not likely to go down any time soon (if ever). But I am going to try a little diversification this time around!

You can still get good names for a very small investment in .US. and when you see that .de has over 5 million registrations it opens your eyes to the possibilities of a strong country code. As the world's biggest market I would think the U.S. has a pretty good chance to have its CCLTD stick. I am starting to warm up a little to .info too.

The .com only crowd may well be right but I will never say never again.
 

mole

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@Om and Think

I didn't say type-in, I said random type-in.

I type-in to the address bar all the time to get to this site, just as I type-in to the address bar all the time to get to my .info and .biz sites. I'm a speed typer (I think) and I find it very convenient to do so and hardly any difference either way.

I type-in because I am aware and have remembered the site address, whether .com, .info, .biz, .co.uk, .com.au, .de, .ne.jp. And that has nothing to do with random type-ins. :)
 

Omni

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Agree with you mole. Confused a little though, would you consider typing in "domainname.com" - without knowing the site's existence (just assume) - random type-in though?
 

mole

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Originally posted by Omni
Agree with you mole. Confused a little though, would you consider typing in "domainname.com" - without knowing the site's existence (just assume) - random type-in though?

Yes, I sometimes do. The type-in raaraah was built on examples like sex.com and playboy.com. Some people are naturally curious to know what's on the other side of that address.

Also things like whitehouse.com, when someone thinks he/she is sure that's where the address should be, it isn't in this case :).

Names are another good example where people do experiment with, like omni.com, who the hell owns my name ?
 

Guest
Originally posted by Omni
Agree with you mole. Confused a little though, would you consider typing in "domainname.com" - without knowing the site's existence (just assume) - random type-in though?

To mole...I mean "random" type-ins when I refer to "type-ins," as opposed to type-ins search for specific brands or companies.

To Omni...the random type-in is the original driver of secondary market of domain value, and still plays a large role in the industry.

Many people use the address bar as a quick search-tool for a specific topic, often before they try the SE's. For example, someone looking for keychains would "type-in" keychains.com. Some looking for a hotel room in Florida would type-in floridahotels.com.

There is no foreknowledge of an existing site here...just the experience that something useful can often be found via the keyterm type-in.

Again, it only takes a small percentage of the overall searchers using the type-in method to make a domain valuable.

This is pretty much conventional wisdom and practice in the domain industry. People like Rick Schwartz have made serious money from the type-in phenomenon, even with non-adult names.

Miles
 

mole

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Originally posted by Namethink


Agreed. The type-in continues to be used. And of even greater importance is the offline-advertising related "type-in," where a consumer hears or sees a URL for a company they want to e-connect with, and they default to the ".com."



That's happening less and less today. The rise and familiarity of ccTLD usage like .co.uk and .de have though surfers to be less default prone to .com. Surfers generally know soemthing about the site they are looking for, and will know immediately that this is obviously not the site there were after and back out prompto.
 

Guest
Originally posted by mole



That's happening less and less today. The rise and familiarity of ccTLD usage like .co.uk and .de have though surfers to be less default prone to .com. Surfers generally know soemthing about the site they are looking for, and will know immediately that this is obviously not the site there were after and back out prompto.

Link?

And I've always agreed that major cc's are a different story, because of national commercial forces and factors, particularly in Europe.

Miles
 

Omni

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Originally posted by CrucialDom


DotCom is king - so was WorldCom

Only time will tell...


CrucialDom
I don't get how DotCom and WorldCom relate.
 

Duke

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Powerful brand names do not always stay powerful. The business and internet landscape is littered with hundreds of examples. Because something is wildly popular today does not mean it will be tomorrow.
 

CrucialDom

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Originally posted by Omni
I don't get how DotCom and WorldCom relate.


It is very hard not to see the fall of WorldCom as the aftermath of the DotCom bubble burst.

CrucialDom
 

Omni

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CrucialDom I still don't get it. Care to explain?

From what I understand, WorldCom had accounting malpractice - and I see no link between that and DotCom. Please explain.
 
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