Originally posted by snoopy
seems there is a small market in the sub $50 region, but I'd say corporate buying would now be non existent.
Yes, I would agree. corporate or company buyers would really have little or no reason to go with .ws unless they are selling to the people in the .ws country. I suspect the majority of drops are not from companies but from speculator drops due to it now being a little over 2 years from .ws being offered and lead to the mass drops. Its hard to find any .ws sites pointing to company sites even after 2 years. Speculators would have already sold a lot of these names to interested end users if there were an interest.
The company I am with had purchased 1 .ws name because we needed a particular generic name to use for a promotion. We wont be renewing ours either though it does not expire for another year or so. Originally we had purchased several of the new.net names for our need for generic URL's but those don't work at all for business IMO. I believe there will also be a massive name drop at new.net soon that won't be picked up very quickly by speculators or by end users. Many end users are using new.net sites mainly to forward to existing URL's (the new.net names are pretty URL's but they have limited visability and in reality are just a subdomain in disguise)
Some eternal optimists of the alternative extensions like to argue that "well .com has massive drops too". What they fail to recognize is there are very few truly generic single word .coms that drop. Its primarily the crappy ones that either outlived their purpose or never had a good purpose to register in the first place.
I bring this up because I believe for a new extension to be
of lasting value as a whole... it must be viable/professional and meaningful. .ws /.cc/ and .shop.new.net don't have these 3 important ingredients. A tld that is purchased where the buyer would not think of not renewing will certainly be a long term winner. Afterall renewals ultimately will 'pay the fiddlers' of the people controlling a particular extension.
We now have the .us of the .ws name we had registered.... amazing how much better it is for us having the one character change from a 'w' to a 'u' . We are based in the U.S. so it works
because it has the 3 ingredients other alternatives don't offer us.
The .ws name drop list full of fantastic generics confirms my own thoughts on .ws In reality, the end buyers collectively will tell the complete story of how well any extension is by registration numbers and more importantly by renewalls. We wont know how .info does based on this method of evaluation until 2004 but I suspect .us/.info/and maybe .biz to do much better than .ws and others.
All just my own opinions of course.
Sorry to have been so long winded.
On a side note:
great forum dnforum! keep up the good work