Domain Predictions For 2005

[mole]

Where do you think the domain industry is headed in the next 12 months?:

Will .COM value finally get real as speculators/investors trying to liquidate their accumulated assets for a "big" payoff after waiting out the dismal plummeting in .COM resale value in 2000-2003 - finally realise that the big time buyers are actually very few and far between?

Will the new gTLDs like .INFO and .BIZ introduced in 2001 finally see the light of day?

Will .CO.UK finally be forced to go 2LD into just .UK in line with the launch of .EU to the public late this year to "keep up with the times".

 

[gogeorge]

Where do you think the domain industry is headed in the next 12 months?:

Will .COM value finally get real as speculators/investors trying to liquidate their accumulated assets for a "big" payoff after waiting out the dismal plummeting in .COM resale value in 2000-2003 - finally realise that the big time buyers are actually very few and far between?

Will the new gTLDs like .INFO and .BIZ introduced in 2001 finally see the light of day?

Will .CO.UK finally be forced to go 2LD into just .UK in line with the launch of .EU to the public late this year to "keep up with the times".

Hopefully many small businesses will realize the value of good domain names and increase their purchases. I think sales continue to go up. The alternate TLDs may increase in value quicker than the .com

 

[Steen]

I hope corporations will start using ccTLDs more and just using .com for splash/lander/US site.

Example: http://www.flightcentre.com/

 

[jazzpetals]

I predict one of my names will sell for a $mil.

Where do you think the domain industry is headed in the next 12 months?:

Will .COM value finally get real as speculators/investors trying to liquidate their accumulated assets for a "big" payoff after waiting out the dismal plummeting in .COM resale value in 2000-2003 - finally realise that the big time buyers are actually very few and far between?

Will the new gTLDs like .INFO and .BIZ introduced in 2001 finally see the light of day?

Will .CO.UK finally be forced to go 2LD into just .UK in line with the launch of .EU to the public late this year to "keep up with the times".

 

[pelican]

many ccTLD already allow 2nd-level ccTLD registration. Let's see when will .uk be out

 

[Kevin]

The best .info, .biz, and .us domains will continue to increase in value.

As for the type-in .coms, the trend towards maintaining parked PPC pages will continue – it is easy, passive profit.

 

[Kyric]

I think you may have a slightly wrong idea there Mole. Dot com was majorly down after the dot com crash but 2004 definitely showed a major resurgence in buyers for dot com and I think dot com is experiencing another boom. I have no doubt that 2005 is going to have some big sales.

 

[MediaHound]

Hey guys, might want to check out
http://www.dnforum.com/showthread.php?t=80140

 

[mole]

but 2004 definitely showed a major resurgence in buyers for dot com

No doubt, I'm sure domain speculators want to believe that. Don't forget, however, that the "top sales" happen to a very small fraction of .COM namespace.

.COM namespace in itself is infinitely expandable. In fact, you can get ilovecomandwillbuythenameanytime.com right now for $4.98 at Yahoo!

It's what on the left of the dot that might take up some interest, and I don't think embattled businesses (especially the SMEs) are as hard up to pay the "big bucks" of .COM now there is .BIZ, .US and the like made available in the last 3 years.

After all, there is still Google Adwords to drive targetted traffic. Better invest into that, than the hope of someone typing in their name out of curiosity and blind assumptions.

2005 will see a further dilution and erosion of the dated type-in traffic mantra, and a strengthening of navigation alternatives driven by even better web technology.

 

[click55]

I think dot com still is and always will be the best, into the jungle of the "almostunknowncountrycctlds" most of the "normal" internet users only get lost.
When they surf what they try at first is always dot com.

I agree the value of a domain is mostly what is on the left of the dot.
To make realistic predictions we all have to think the way a "normal" internet user can think, they are the mass and they make the market, it is useless to have a good name with an impossible extension that almost nobody knows or even think it could exist.

The internet market money flow comes from potential buyers, not just from courious or from domain traders; having a lot of hits on a domain like creditcard dot "unknownTLD" doesnt necessarily mean that it is a good domain, personally i dont use and dont trust too much the PPC system, I dont think its too realistic even if it can give a good income to the domain owner.

I also think that as soon all the IDN charachters will be totally compatible with the most important browsers and search engines we will see IDNs taking off really fast (most of the words containing special chars are actually mispelled , there is a site "curiosita.com" , curiosity in italian, that is online since years and is getting good hits, I recently regged "curiosità.com" , the correct word, and I am getting a lot of hits as well; as soon the Italian users will realize they can type the correct words using the localized chars form their keyboards on the major search engines, all the mispelled words will be almost forgotten.
This will happen with other countries IDNs as well.

My opinions of course.

 

[mole]

IWhen they surf what they try at first is always dot com.

First is the operative word. And paying a hefty premium over other addresses just to be "first" for those brain-dead surfers who don't buy anything because they will just back away and mutter "schucks, another ugly links page" or "heck, a porn banner farm!", is getting a bit stupid today.

If you develop, URLs serve as an important means to find your way back, and making people remember a good keyword in the .BIZ or .INFO or .US namespace isn't rocket science. Making people remember whatwasthethatbludyname.com is.

The mass hoarding, ridiculous pricing and plain PPC landing pages that inflict a large swarth of desirable .COM namespace is actually the best thing to help encourage development in new namespace.

.COM is overrated in today's new namespace landscape. Type-in traffic even more overrated. And when even that starts to prove unrealiable, artificial traffic creation, manipulated redirects and concealed farming becomes the only way to prop the old mantra and maintain "pretty" weblogs to buyers months prior to a sale.

I'm not saying that .COM is not desired, just that at what price? Sure, you can buy your way in and pay huge moneys for three word .COMs or misspells, but not everyone is born with the IQ of a goat or wants to go to jail for sending kids to porn sites. Give me a one word .INFO or .BIZ or .US anytime.

 

[click55]

>>> mole

I totally agree but I think that sometimes a good short 2 word dot com is better than a bad 1 word dot info, biz, net.
Btw I still am a newbie at domain market, the only domains I bought till now are some 3 chars dot com, (that lately i am selling on ebay).
I own only less than 2 hundred domains, mostly personally regged.
I m still learning....

 

[mole]

Btw I still am a newbie at domain market, the only domains I bought till now are some 3 chars dot com, (that lately i am selling on ebay).
I own only less than 2 hundred domains, mostly personally regged.
I m still learning....

Hey, not bullying or anything, those 1991 dotcom kings think they know what's good for the Internet, so long as it is good for them. Good luck on your 3 chars dot coms. :-D

 

[Vivvy]

just a quick observation... most surfers do have the iq of a goat, at least when it comes to technology... which is why 95% of them still use IE and the default screen resolution their computer came with. Most folks can't even set up an email address in Outlook Express. At this point if you aim your efforts at the lowest common denominator you'll hit the largest audience. Those people still gravitate to .com even when every piece of printed/advertised informaton you give them says .info, .biz or .us.

It's hard not to overestimate the general public's tech knowledge from the seat you're in, or even the seat your friends are in because you tend to hang out with folks like you, or you're doing business with other geeks. In real world, non-tech, business the consumer is rarely more knowledgable than they were 10 years ago.

Here's the difference ... Joe Blow is techie stupid, so he hires Joe Geek. Joe Geek tells him, "ah ... .com isn't that big a deal anymore, don't buy that $10k 4 letter domain, get a .biz or .us" If you're seeing a drop in good prices for .com, it's Joe Geek's fault, because believe me, the goats don't think for themselves about these issues.

Vivvy

 

[mole]

just a quick observation... most surfers do have the iq of a goat, at least when it comes to technology...

Which is why search engines were invented. And why Google is today the defining standard for web navigation. Just make Google your home page (you can use any extension you want since Google has them all), type in what you want, and bang.

Would you believe that people back in the past actually tried to type in a subject matter in the address bar to get to it, let alone append an extension like .COM?

When you do this today and have Google toolbar installed and set to take on the search bar role, it goes bang, and you have your search results, pretty scary.

I agree, this domain game is geeky to some extent, and the people who use the type-in address most are the domain speculators, methodically checking addresses out on a daily basis. This is not what you call the normal Joe blow.

I had a very temporary spike in one of my .COMs recently because I bought the singular for a website that just launched but had a plural. My stats were going ballistic, then died as fast as it started. It never came back.

Worse, most domainers can't read web stats to save their life, and so they wing it. So they think they had 1,000 type-ins a day when in actuality the stats were showing a lot of other different things. The blind leading the blind.

My point is simply that URLs are best when seen as a developer's tool to get people to remember to come back, not a tool that magically creates curiousity so tempting you just need to "type it in". That magic probably applies to less than 0.001 of the existing .COM namespace today. Some people talk about .COM with such conviction and martyred belief like they own sex.com or something.

 

[Nexus]

Some additional predictions from me:

With the EXPLOSIVE popularity of Firefox, with NATIVE IDN support, Internationalized domain names will be used more and more, and those using PPC will begin to truly reap the benefits of their IDN names. Likewise, more cease & desist letters will be mailed out to IDN holders as trademark owners are awakened to these movements by identity protection services who begin to push IDN's using the improved figures on recognition occuring in the market. As examples businesses using something like "hola.com" or "espanol.com" as trademarks will come after owners of "holá.com" and "español.com" with much more heightened urgency.

The PPC page trend will be somewhat slowed due to the rising issue of legal confrontations due to optimization towards existing trademarks.

Script vendors will slowly begin to fashion multifaceted scripts that catar to serial web developers. Focusing on managing a farm of dissepate websites from a single comprehensive control panel, as opposed to solutions the target numerous separately managed content scripts. Generating networks of content that not only feed ads to third parties, but systematically feed ads into itself will move from being a solution programmed case-by-case, and into mainstream application.

~ Nexus

 

[Nexus]

Another prediction...

By the end of 2005, a hip-hop rapper will work "GOOGLE" into a song by rhyming "Gee-Double-O-Gee-Elle-Eey". It's gotta a rhythm, and I can dance to it... :wink:

From Internet to Cybernaut
Surf as Far As Eyes Can See
Browsing at The Speed of Thought
Gee-Double-O-Gee-Elle-Eey

Ok... I'm not MC Domey (from DnJournal fame), but I tried... :-D

~ Nexus

 

[Dr. Domaining]

Only time will tell.

 

[Mattius]

Ive only been around the traps for about mmm 2 weeks lol but i got a feeling, a gut feeling, an instinct that .info is going to do well over the next 5 years +

Why?

Because its a common term used in everyday english both on and off the net.

Hey john you got that info i asked you for ?
Where is that info on last months sales ?

People are familiar with the term far more than they were with com. Not only that its pretty clear what it stands for. If i go to php.info...i know im gonna get information on php.

Its going to take some education, and as far as im aware there's never really been a push to inform the public at large that other tld's actually exist.

 

[mole]

Worth repeating. Some very nice development on .INFO namespace.

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=site:.info+info