This Just In From Snapnames!!

[Luc]

Originally posted by Beachie
The little guy will have no chance from now on. In the lead up to WLS, expect auctions for pre-WLS subscriptions where the bids go beyond your grasp. After WLS, expect immense difficulty getting any good subscriptions because BD, Ult and the few other big players will buy them in bulk, months before the drop.

The pro-WLS people will realize the terrible mistake they made, and it will all be too late.

The worst monopoly is coming on October 27th.

E X A C T L Y.

With one other thing. It's already too late.

 

[Nexus]

Originally posted by affordablehosting
Internet Keywords are inevitable, and Microsoft is slightly less horrible at managing a monopoly than Verisign.

Heh, heh... Verisign is implementing a plan to resolve unregistered "typo" names to search requests, and Microsoft is no doubt tapping its chin as to how it can introduce Internet Keywords in such an open manner as to not piss everyone off by denying access. They've already opened "key wording" up to the search engine of your choice. I also agree that "instant browsing" on keywords alone in inevitable. Lots of debate about it though, and I guess a tangent from this thread to be sure.

~ Nexus

 

[Nexus]

Originally posted by DomainRetriever
E X A C T L Y. With one other thing. It's already too late.

You know... all your posts come across so much more ominously with that avatar... :-D A credit to Hugo Weaving's acting, no doubt.

~ Nexus

 

[affordablehosting]

E X A C T L Y.
With one other thing. It's already too late.

So WLS is gonna be a disaster for .coms...

BIG DEAL. This, at the very worst, will be the end of the market for .coms and .nets... It doesn't mean the online real-estate industry is gonna collapse like the Tacomah Narrows bridge. Contrary to popular beleif, the market extends past .coms. In 2 years, we'll all still be trading .tlds or internet keywords, but the tld's will end in .us and .biz.

If WLS meets anti-WLS folks' apocalyptic predictions, there will eventually be less interest .coms, and only the following companies will be hurt in the long run:
-Verisign, but then again, the morons deserve it.
-BD and UltSearch, since fewer folks will be interested in .coms. Then again, the market would be well served by getting rid of them.
-Anyone who has LOTS of money invested in .coms. Don't feel too bad for them... their domains will still be worth something.

Small domainers will benefit whether WLS goes as Pro-WLS folks say or Anti-WLS folks say. They can either get a chance at decent expiring .coms, or they can register decent names that end with .us, and the market will move there. I don't see what the big concern is.

On another note, this forum ought to start an anti-WLS mutual fund... We could all buy stock in NeuStar (.us), Afilias (.info), and NeuLevel (.biz). They're the registries that will see more interest and registrations if WLS fails miserably. Maybe we could short-sell Verisign while we're at it...

 

[Ed30]

Originally posted by affordablehosting
So WLS is gonna be a disaster for .coms...

This, at the very worst, will be the end of the market for .coms and .nets...

How so?

Competition will be eroded for dropping names, so prices for names will increase.

 

[Luc]

Originally posted by affordablehosting



So WLS is gonna be a disaster for .coms...

BIG DEAL. This, at the very worst, will be the end of the market for .coms and .nets... It doesn't mean the online real-estate industry is gonna collapse like the Tacomah Narrows bridge. Contrary to popular beleif, the market extends past .coms. In 2 years, we'll all still be trading .tlds or internet keywords, but the tld's will end in .us and .biz.

If WLS meets anti-WLS folks' apocalyptic predictions, there will eventually be less interest .coms, and only the following companies will be hurt in the long run:
-Verisign, but then again, the morons deserve it.
-BD and UltSearch, since fewer folks will be interested in .coms. Then again, the market would be well served by getting rid of them.
-Anyone who has LOTS of money invested in .coms. Don't feel too bad for them... their domains will still be worth something.

Small domainers will benefit whether WLS goes as Pro-WLS folks say or Anti-WLS folks say. They can either get a chance at decent expiring .coms, or they can register decent names that end with .us, and the market will move there. I don't see what the big concern is.

On another note, this forum ought to start an anti-WLS mutual fund... We could all buy stock in NeuStar (.us), Afilias (.info), and NeuLevel (.biz). They're the registries that will see more interest and registrations if WLS fails miserably. Maybe we could short-sell Verisign while we're at it...

Uhh, the reason most of us "domainers" pick up names from
drops now is either because of

a) they will bring in traffic
b) they are highly marketable and have great potential (ex:
dictionary, 3 letter, etc).

.US, .INFO, .xxx are none of those.

Now, you're telling me that in 2 years .us and .info will be the
thing that every domainer will be hunting after (assuming WLS
does kick in soon)?

Not a chance.

Sorry, but the ugly truth is that those who don't become adapt to
the new system (and there will be MANY), will have to start
looking for a new job mid Jan 2004.

Luc L.

 

[Nexus]

Originally posted by Ed30
Competition will be eroded for dropping names, so prices for names will increase.

How will the erosion of "competition" cause prices to increase? Is it because a small group of highly resourced people will allegedly get all the good names? WLS to me seems to be the "creation" of competition, in that for the first time, people won't need to use as many of the services as possible to get a name. Right now competition is AS open as ever on the WLS "are you ready" phase. After the landrush, people could theoretically use the same registrars they register new names with, who'll compete on price and service.

Post-WLS Landrush, everyone will have the same opportunity to get names as they do now. I would imagine most serious speculators will need to pick up a copy of Domain-Retriever and subscribe to Exody. Prices will probably drop, because people like BD won't need to "bid-up" names like they do now to "scare" other resellers out of the marketplace (or max out their resources in exotic schemes and partnerships in trying to acquire them). They'll get them *all* at the same price. I cannot see any scenario in which prices should increase because of that...

The only way I see the market being upset is if most everyone simply gave up because they couldn't work out what they wanted far enough ahead of time. I'm not sure anyone has made a sane argument for people achieving good ROI by making phone calls and harrassing scores of current registrants into selling. If this happens en masse, I'm sure there will be some type of action taken by the FCC.

Originally posted by DomainRetriever
Sorry, but the ugly truth is that those who don't adopt to the
new system (and there will be MANY), will have to start looking
for a new job mid Jan 2004.

Refusal to adapt is the cardinal sin of evolution. I don't think anyone is "owed" a stagnant marketplace in any sector, especially when major "changes" are planned and discussed in slow drawn out stages. I wish I was a fly on the wall of those weekly Walmart meetings about which way the latest wind was blowing.

I feel like I want to be a ball-buster and tell people to keep their head "in the game", and not "pull out" and give up. Maybe I have too much faith in human ingenuity.

~ Nexus

 

[affordablehosting]

Originally posted by DomainRetriever


Sorry, but the ugly truth is that those who don't become adapt to
the new system (and there will be MANY), will have to start
looking for a new job mid Jan 2004.

Luc L.

Actually, if you sell your domains and join the "Anti-WLS Mutual Fund", you're gonna be a rich millionaire, and you won't need a job. Maybe you'll have enough to buy UltSearch, which will be relatively worthless if WLS fails the .coms.

But seriously, if .com and .net get screwed up by Verisign, the businesses that were interested in picking up a dropped DecentDomain.com at registration price will instead go and buy DecentDomain.us. After all .US, .INFO, and .BIZ have been gaining strength recently, but they only have about 1/10th as many domains registered as .com, leaving plenty of room for marketable domains. It will take a while for the new TLD's to start dropping, but it'll happen.

If businesses turn to .us, we'll see more commercials for AdProduct.US, and soon, .us, .biz, and .info may come as naturally as .com. The new TLDs will see more typins, and we'll have a new market. There may be a long, dry, desert for a while, but I'm certain that the market fully recover and come back somewhere.

If you are sure WLS will fail and drive businesses away from .coms, I would suggest selling enough of the .coms you have to pick up the corresponding .us, .biz, and .infos at registration prices while you can.

 

[mole]

Originally posted by affordablehosting
After all .US, .INFO, and .BIZ have been gaining strength recently,

yes it has, slowly but surely. Check out http://www.why.biz on examples of the initiatives some people are taking to grow the .BIZ space beyond Neulevel's anaemic marketing efforts.

 

[NexSite]

WLS is nothing more than a synthetic land rush created by the genious double speak wizards at Network solutions. WLS is going to make them more money for every dropped name that is reregistered, and for every decent domain that doesn't go through the drop/delete cycle. Before they were getting only $6 per re-registered, now that will increase almost four fold. They will get this moeny for EVERY WLS subsription regardless if the name drops OR NOT. SO. Even if the name does'nt drop, you pay for the slot if you win it. Yearly.

So my name doesn't drop, I pay a yearly fee. The guy that bets that I will let it drop and wins the slot will pay $39 and up, perhaps even a lot more, even if I don't let it drop.

This is an all out assault on the speculators. Sit back and watch, or plan on running up your credit card bills for slots that guarantee you nothing except a slot that may or may not get you the name. So you do have to do a lot of work. You have to research names that have invalid contact info, and hope they will drop, or you contact the current owner and actually make them a decent offer. No more wholsale names is what Im seeing. I see three things happening now. Hijacking will increase, owners will recieve more offers, and the pool of speculators will shrink.

Oh. ANd DNF will see their platinum memberships decline and the exclusive lifetime subscriptons sill stop flying off the, server?

 

[affordablehosting]

This is an all out assault on the speculators... No more wholsale names is what Im seeing. I see three things happening now. Hijacking will increase, owners will recieve more offers, and the pool of speculators will shrink.

Look, as long as there are computers, and people want to keep them connected, there will always be a market for online real-estate. I wouldn't put it past some of the crazier Anti-WLS folks to claim WLS will destroy every computer in the world, but that argument hasn't been made yet.

You, as well as Verisign, are looking only one step forward. The next step is Verisign making a lot of money as .com and .net become undesirable for speculators and even more expensive for businesses.

The next step, however, is businesses and speculators leaving .coms for something else. Verisign is currently screwing themselves- they're cashing in a $70 million dollar/year business so they can make a quick buck on WLS. Unfortunately, many business folks, especially the neanderthals at Verisign, are interested in short term profits only.

The system is going to go back to the way it was. There will be speculation again, but best of all, there will be a narrow window of opportunity for small-scale speculators to pick up great new TLDs at registration prices.

Things move quickly in the domain world. I think that before you even decide to throw in the towel, another medium (keywords, other TLDs) will replace .com.