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Originally posted by FLe8
I see three gaping problems with .kids.us:
1. Too pricey. Initial price and renewal price are exhorbitant. Not that this should concern people who have money to buy the domains, but that the kids.us directory will be very shallow since most business owners will not see the value and "buy-in". If Yahoo! had started their directory charging $299 a listing, it would have never succeeded -- they waited until the directory and traffice warranted such a charge.
2. Even if the directory is great, there is still the inherent problem of ensuring that kids do not "drift" off the network to bad sites. As a former I.T. Director for an Internet filtering company, I know that just HAVING a list of good sites does not ensure that people will confine themselves to those sites. You need supplementary controls (parental control software, proxy or packet-filter hardware) to enforce these goals. And such controls do not need consistent domain names to function.
3. It expects every kid-friendly company to re-brand in order for the site to be accessible other than through a directory link. Will Disney change their brand to .kids.us? If not, they cannot be sure that an ISP or parental control locking children into these domains won't block the child's attempt to access their site.
In short, I agree that kids.us is a flop. It is much easier to address kid friendly portals / browsing using compiled lists than expecting people to rebrand their site and pay huge fees for listing.
1. Just the right price..ensures that only those serious about developing for the space will participate.
2. Kids will "drift off" ..of course they will they will just as they also will drift in..by the millions.
3. No one expects every kid-friendly company to re-brand... only those that want to actually have access to this market at considerably less expense than paying PPC, google adwords etc...Disney needs not change any brand.. Kids.Us will simply be another channel for them..
In short, to say Kids.us is a flop after just a few weeks open is extremely shortsighted.