Future of the Internet.

Matvey · Oct 11, 2006

It is clear that Early bird gets the worm. ( in the case you dont have thousands to spend)

I see that there is no way at this point I can go out and register a premium .com .org .net .us .info .ca etc....

But is it worth getting some of the other extensions if the name is absolutely premium or close?

Another question of mine is will the internet be the same in ten years? Whos to say if we will even have urls. Or if there will be something different. ( vhs to dvd )

So is it worth Investing in such names as Premium.nl or something of the sort?

Please discuss.

Olney · Oct 11, 2006

If it's future markets pick up a pocket translator & think either IDN or ccTLD.
Either that or just develop..
...edit
I do realize foreign markets are not for everyone...

mistermouse63 · Oct 12, 2006

Mark my words - ccTLDs is the future for most of the world. I could name you at least a dozen big well developed countries where ccTLDs are much more popular than .com ever was (for national websites). Internet advertising is just coming to these countries. Nevertheless, the growth stats are quite impressive.

And yes, I agree that foreign markets are not for everyone. Being at least bilingual and knowing more about the country than what you can read in a tourist brochure is a great advantage.

compubahn · Oct 12, 2006

mistermouse63 said:
Mark my words - ccTLDs is the future for most of the world.

Do you feel the same way about the US?

.com, .net, & .org are in such wide use worldwide that search results often return sites relevant to keywords (as expected) but not to geography. There seems to be a sizeable percentage of sites which only service a single country either by choice or as a practical issue. Relevant search results become irrelevant in this case.

Olney · Oct 12, 2006

I think that some of us who search in other languages try relay back that there is already a large use of ccTLDs. That's not the case yet with .us.
Let's say for example .co.uk, .cn, .de, or .jp. By searching in English from the US you might never run across these extensions. You go to the local version of a Search Engine just like a person from that region would & search a relavant term, you'll see a lot of established sites from the country using these extensions.
With the dot us, I think they have to be used more to gain more value.

cbe said:
Do you feel the same way about the US?

.com, .net, & .org are in such wide use worldwide that search results often return sites relevant to keywords (as expected) but not to geography. There seems to be a sizeable percentage of sites which only service a single country either by choice or as a practical issue. Relevant search results become irrelevant in this case.

Onward · Oct 12, 2006

cbe said:
Do you feel the same way about the US?

I have seen .us being utilized a lot more in the past year. I believe .us will only go up in value...but will never be .com...I'd say it will reach on avg 15-40% of .com value (and in some sales already has).

hugegrowth · Oct 12, 2006

the best extensions to reg are .com .org .net .info and maybe .biz.

country code domains are also great, but I'd stick to countries that have high use of internet, like .us .de .ca .co.uk

I've regged a few .cc because they were good one worders, and .cc is usually prominent in domain searches at most registrars. .cc is even picking up a bit lately, I've noted more sales in the xxx to low xxxx range.

I don't buy obscure country code domains like .nl, .at, and so on. If you do it's best to stick to the language of the country. If the country isn't english I've never seen the point of regging english words in non-english countries. But english words do sell in .de sometimes. Some premium words, like 'poker', have had sales in obscure country code extensions.

Then there are IDNs. People who speak or can spell in a language that can be used for IDNs, like Japanese, chinese, etc can do well with these. Or if you have a partner that can help you. It could be like the .com rush all over again, because it only makes sense that people want to use the internet in their own language.

Will the internet be the same in ten years? Who knows, but phone numbers have been around a long time and no one has come up with something better. Phones have changed a lot but you always need a number. Domains will probably still be needed, because new businesses and groups are always created, so how do you reach these on the web when there are so many. I've tried but can't think of anything that could replace domains. It's amazing how many places you see domains today, like travel brochures, tv ads, on the radio, throughout the newspaper and magazines, on products you buy, etc.

Is it worth Investing in such names as Premium.nl or something of the sort?
Personally I wouldn't.

compubahn · Oct 12, 2006

Onward said:
I have seen .us being utilized a lot more in the past year. I believe .us will only go up in value...but will never be .com...I'd say it will reach on avg 15-40% of .com value (and in some sales already has).

I agree & hope we are right. I bought a few .us names this week. Probably overpaid a bit - but purchased to develop so price isn't as big a consideration as if I were buying on speculation.

For .US to see similar success as .ca or .de, there will have to be more developed sites to build recognition of the tld. If all of the keyword domains are parked on sedo (etc.) waiting for high xx,xxx offers from bigbusiness, inc., it shouldn't be much of a surprise that the market isn't strong for the tld. More developed sites on any tld increases the awareness &, ultimately, the values.

The cctlds are as laser-focused as you can get from a relevance standpoint. the same can't be said for the global tlds. The biz could be anywhere.

In some cases, .com has started to get in it's own way in regard to pricing. I bid on a 3 keyword .com last week & the seller responded with 64k. The name was good, but it wasn't that good ...often, there seems to be a disconnect from reality with .com in regard to price expectations.

That said, most of my names are still .com

Matvey · Oct 12, 2006

You said maybe .biz

I know Frustrated.com could go for 1k atleast and I just aquired Frustrated.biz and I knwo the name is only worht like $20.00 now but does it have that potential in like a year or two or maybee 5 ?

mistermouse63 · Oct 12, 2006

Of course the names used in ccTLDs have be in local languages. It makes no sense to type a name in your language with a .com. Just go around Europe and you'll see that an absolute majority of ads use ccTLDs. The only .coms are those that belong to American or international companies. A simple correlation could easily prove that when most people type in a .com they use english words while when they type in a word in their language, a ccTLD is used. The only countries where .com is a competitor to the national ccTLD are those with very strict rules and big prices - it is just simpler to buy a .com. However, rules are being liberalized.

As for the .us, I think that it has a serious competitor, namely .com. The whole .com boom took place in the USA, not elsewhere. Thus in a way .com is national for the USA.

In Europe, a similar situation can be seen with .eu which will for a long time if not forever remain inferior to any local ccTLD.

I also can't agree with hugegrowth about sticking to .us .de .ca .co.uk just because supposedly these countries have high internet usage rates. Just look at the stats. Nordic countries such as Sweden or Finland have higher usage of IT technologies than almost anywhere in the world (and definitely higher than Germany, UK or USA). Even new members of the EU such as the Baltic states have more than 50% of the population using Internet on daily basis which is the EU average. If you look at Russia, internet is expanding there at 400% per year (currently they have about 20 mln internet users with a population of 150 mln). Also look at the growth of investment spent on internet advertisement in all of these countries. Sure you can stick to .de or .co.uk but it actually already too late to make a lot of money with these ccTLDs as big companies are doing well at snapping of the premium names.

What you really have to look for is where the developement will take place next. If you read that some ccTLD became hot recently, it's already too late - someone else got the biggest piece of the pie and you'll be getting crumbs

smurf · Oct 12, 2006

id say just grab good or descent .com's now and hold on to em for 3-5 years no matter what offers you get because if you just wait that time when the internet is a lot bigger the value on each domain will sky-rocket ;]

itleast thats what im doin

H2FC · Oct 12, 2006

It seems that everybody always talks about the IDN and ccTLD's when it comes to new opportunties in the domain biz. Well, thats ok but you guys should wake up to the huge potential of clean energy names thats springing up everywhere because of the serious threat of global warming along with the high cost of fossil fuels. And let us not forget about the Islamic extremist terrorism threat that everybody knows is supported by oil and drug dollars. Thats another gigantic reason why the free countries, especially the USA and UK must stop using oil. And they will.

Clean energy names you have never heard of before will be demanding big dollars in the not too distant future. I recently sold 3 names for $14,500 that were almost worthless just a few years ago. I won't post the names here out of respect of the buyers privacy but I probably sold them too cheap. I'm sure he will make a big profit in a few short years....if not sooner.

This is just a heads up call. There are still many great clean energy names available, I register them almost everyday but I can only invest in so many of them... and I almost have my limit now.

www.fuelcelldomains.com

mistermouse63 · Oct 12, 2006

Im not sure what Shell is going to say about not using oil... and yeah sure, clean energy names might be great. However, here we have many more variables in the equation. Global politics is a complicated thing and global economics is even worse. Predicting future dinamics is anything but easy in these spheres as they are very hard to quantify. And if you can't quantify it, it's just a speculation. The reason why energy names would sell well might be based on expectations and speculations rather than real facts. Oil will be used for decades to come.

When it comes to ccTLDs, things are a lot clearer. Im sure that in next 5 years everyone here (or perhaps elsewhere if better forums emerge) will be trading ccTLDs. Besides, Internet growth rates can tell you very precisely how domain markets will be developing in various countries. Statistics is the answer.

hugegrowth · Oct 12, 2006

mistermouse63 said:
I also can't agree with hugegrowth about sticking to .us .de .ca .co.uk just because supposedly these countries have high internet usage rates.

I only gave those countries as examples, the examples you gave are good too - as long as the country has good internet penetration. But I only know english and french, so I wouldn't know where to start in regging names for sweden, finnish, russian country codes.

You are right to say look ahead to where the development will be, and maybe find some friends who speak other languages too.

Also, find your niche - everyone knows a lot about something. Whether it's a subject area you can register .com's in, or a country where you know the language and what the hot topics are.

krooga · Oct 14, 2006

Interesting topic !

According to Vinton Cerf the co-founder of the net 99% of its uses have yet to be invented...

Video Interview here: http://www.domaine.info/content/view/1274/187/