Originally posted by safesys
For it to be a true rival, surely one would expect to see it growing not falling at such an early stage?
Faced with a decline in daily registration volume to 632 per day for global registration volume (thats europe, asia AND america) I just don't see how your argument can hold water so I'm curious as to what you are actually basing your argument on as its clearly not based on the objective data reflected in the number of registrations.
With regards the sales values you've listed, those are at a level that is a fraction of the sales once would expect in .com - so again I can't see how they support the notion of .info building to become a "strong rival".
Of course, "rival" does not necessarily mean surpass. And here, I think that .info will of course not surpass .com in usage and definitely not in sales values
What I DO think is that 2-3 years from now in many countries it will be perfectly natural to type in a .info address when looking for obviously informational sites, like weather.info, election.info, traffic.info, health.info, etc.
Perhaps I'm an optimist (better an optimist and wrong...), but for the proper future international growth of the Internet, it seems almost inevitable that sites will eventually get themselves in order: That is, .nets for net-services, .org for non-profits, .info for information, etc. is a lot more sustainable than only two choices: 1) .com (good), or 2) Anything else (obscurity).
Consider that less than 10% of the world's population is currently online-- where are the new guys going to go?
Poor introductory stats don't necessarily condemm .info or any of the other gTLDs: It's a bad market right now, so all the things needed to build momentum-- popular press, new investment, some brave bioneers-- are missing. (Yes, by contrast CNO is recovering, but this is an easier process than building something anew...)
The transition is likely to be slow and happen first in those countries where many new people are still coming online. Think of Japan-- the new .jp extension was successful despite the "habit" of .co.jp and other alternatives because Japan's "late start" on the net meant that many new people were still coming online, and they accepted the logic of .jp.
Another example: For the first time ever, Sedo's very successful German site is on track to sell more .info's than .com's. Of course, both are distant seconds to .de, but the point is that *where the .com habit is not firmly ingrained, .info makes good sense*.
Finally, I don't think .info values (or those of any other TLD, for that matter), will ever approach the .com days of glory. "Informative" should naturally sell for less than "commercial". Add in the expanded supply and the fact that many .info buyers are in less developed Internet markets and it's clear why .info values lag even today's .com values.
~Matthew
