Major Business 2.0 Magazine Domain Article Now Online

[none]

Being an owner of a few domains, I am concerned about "product obsolesce".
All business owners should be looking at potential threat to their revenue stream
on the horizon. (5 forces analysis)

It might not happen within the next 5 yrs. But, I wouldn't guarantee it won't happen in our lifetime.

Sunken cost in the current system is massive (trillions?), not including the incalculable value of URL mind-share... it's just become too big to abandon or even to initiate substantial change in the forseeable future.

I'll also never say never, but I won't be counting the years.

 

[DaddyHalbucks]

"The second coming of the commerce Internet won't be called the DOTCOM boom, but the Internet as it should have been in the first place" ~ chronicles of 2008 mole


amen

So, in this above scenario, all of the world's big corporations (including the technology heavy weights who run the internet itself) are going to drink "Mole's Kool Aid" (TM) and abandon their .COMs for IDNs and alt/ CC TLDs.

I can hear the CEO thundering "Tell the IT Department to implement the Mole vision ASAP, whatever the cost!" and "Tell the marketing folks to scrap the whole warehouse of marketing books, they are tainted with .COM. Do a massive book burning if you have to" and "Re-shoot all of our commercials, make sure to use .BIZ in them, whatever that is, because Mole likes it."

And, Mole will become the next Bill Gates.

Who wants to wager some BIG money on this fantasy? I'll take all comers.

 

[Rubber Duck]

That is just.. absurd.

The conclusion that should be reached --from all of the high profile .COM sales, the adoption of .COM by US business, the widespread use of .COM as evidenced by type-ins from the public, the VC interest in .COM, and the media attention for .COM --is the exact opposite of yours.

The right conclusion is that only .COM has any real value.

Those hooves are towing saddlebags chock full of gold.

Look those that were part of the orignial Landrush or had the sense to buy up dot com, when they were still cheap have made a fortune. Go to the appraisals forum here and most of the dot coms listed aren't worth anything at all, simply because people are busting their butts trying to squeeze a few more dollars out of the name space. I have followed the registration statics in the last few years and the rapid expansion of the dot com registry now seems to have stalled. There is a lot of data mining going on but the drops are also huge. Dot Net and Dot Org by constrast seem to be marching along lately and if anything the rate of expansion has increased.

Nobody, I think is saying tha Dot Coms are worth less than othe extension or even will be, but the easy money for speculators in this market has long gone. I can tell this is the case simply because of the pick in demand over the last couple of months for dot nets in the secondary market. OK, much of it is speculators trying to pick up stuff on the cheap, but there is definitely a big upsurge in interest.

Best Regards
Dave Wrixon

 

[JMJ]

I'm an avid admirer of extensions that fit the geographical area or when the term fits the extension itself. But when it comes to saying all of the .com names being appraised are crap. Crap is exactly what your statement is. I get quite amused getting appraisals done on names in the middle of $xxxx negotiations and have nay sayers like yourself tell me its worth reg fee which BTW is what I typically pay for 99% of my names.

There are plenty of names dropping on a daily basis under the radar that will bring a nice payoff even in the near future. You just have to go against the grain of what the mainstream is doing to find them. Along with those there are plenty of make sense names still laying around unregged which is or was at one time someones business and may very well be someones business name in the future.

It's been used over and over again but If google wasn't what it was today and google.com came before the master appraisal board we have here it would probably get the usual $xx-$xxx appraisal.

Rick Swartz isn't what he is today by buying one name. He is what he is today by buying many names in many categories at a time when noone else was. It just happens to be the only options were .com .net and .org. obviously he went for the .coms. Ofcourse he and others have the cream of the crop and the cream of the crop companies will eventually pay what they want for them. But just because the cream of the crop is gone doesn't mean a second and third level of crops can't be grown. Or even thrive from those who aren't the buyers with the huge wallets.

This still helps your alt-tld, cctld, etc senario but it also works for two, three and even four word .coms.

 

[zouzas]

ultrasearch a leader in the industry dumped his portfolio ??,,he saw his portfolio getting weaker in the years to come not stronger otherwise while sell if his portfolio would get stronger. same with buydomains why sell if the .com brand is getting stronger not weaker from dilution of dozens of new extesnions flooding the market.

 

[Rubber Duck]

This still helps your alt-tld, cctld, etc senario but it also works for two, three and even four word .coms.

Sorry can't really agree with that. Say there are 50K dictionary words. That means there are 2.5 Billion possible two word combos. OK, most of them will be meaningless, some very meaningful and therefore worth a lot of money, especially if they are short and easy to type. Once you go beyond that it starts to get tricky, with 125 Trillion three word combos, even the best are only going to fetch 4 figures. Once you go to four word combos it actually starts to get easier just to remember the IP addresses and besides, with that many names out there, who the hell is going to buy them all? I mean we are talking 6 raised to the 18th power of ten. That is old style British Trillions, don't know what terminology the Yanks would use? Most of us just cannot contemplate these kinds of numbers.

Best Regards
Dave Wrixon

 

[mole]

Those hooves are towing saddlebags chock full of gold.

For every 2 pairs of DOTCOM hooves that tow saddlebags chock full of gold, two thousand pairs of hooves will be dredging mud because they were inspired by fantasy statements like this.

Which is not a bad thing, since the law of economics would allude that the 'haves' will get richer, and the 'have-nots' will get poorer.

Bring on new mining towns, I say.k:

 

[Rubber Duck]

For every 2 pairs of DOTCOM hooves that tow saddlebags chock full of gold, two thousand pairs of hooves will be dredging mud because they were inspired by fantasy statements like this.

Yes and the ones carrying the sacks full of three and four word combos will find their load even heavier than the Gold!!!

Best Regards
Dave Wrixon

 

[sasquatch]

"...In the dark of night, (Yun) Ye would sit before a bank of computers and, like a conductor, launch programs he wrote to shoot rapid-fire requests to purchase names..."

Hahaha :-D :-D k:

 

[Rubber Duck]

"...In the dark of night, (Yun) Ye would sit before a bank of computers and, like a conductor, launch programs he wrote to shoot rapid-fire requests to purchase names..."

Hahaha :-D :-D k:

Well seeing as lived on the West Coast the domains would have been dropping during the day. I think he would have been aware of that!

Best Regards
Dave Wrixon

So, in this above scenario, all of the world's big corporations (including the technology heavy weights who run the internet itself) are going to drink "Mole's Kool Aid" (TM) and abandon their .COMs for IDNs and alt/ CC TLDs.

Well, whilst I wouldn't advocate that any of them drop their dot coms which after all only cost a few bucks to renew, the Clever Ones will be getting some ccTLDs sorted out, just as Google have done in China, even though it cost them several hundred thousand to secure their names.

The Really Clever Ones will be getting the turf covered for IDN, but there is not much evidence of many being that farsighted. Perhaps a couple of hundred thousand in the budgets of such large companies is not worth stretching the grey matter for!

Best Regards
Dave Wrixon

 

[none]

That is an hilarious and dramatic quote... too funny :-D

 

[DaddyHalbucks]

Sunken cost in the current system is massive (trillions?), not including the incalculable value of URL mind-share... it's just become too big to abandon or even to initiate substantial change in the forseeable future.

Exactly.

Very well put.

 

[sasquatch]

Can't we just enjoy a nice, sexy media article without getting into a speculative, theoretical pissing contest. Let's comment on the contents of the article itself (and its significances if any) without trying to determine the future direction of world's ecommerce for once?

 

[zouzas]

just another example of the erosion of .com

As of yesterday, there were 603,000 dot-ca registrations held by individuals and organizations in Canada, according to Gabriel Ahad, director of communications at the Canadian Internet Registration Authority. "Since July, 2000, the [Canadian] market share for dot-coms has dropped by 14 per cent, while dot-ca's share grew by 13 per cent."



Dot-ca names were only made commercially available to Canadians in December, 2000, when CIRA inherited about 60,000 live names from the University of British Columbia, dot-ca's former operator, and started offering unregistered domain names to individuals and businesses. The current number of dot-ca registrations represents growth of 1,000 per cent in five years, Mr. Ahad says.

"Many Canadian companies are choosing dot-ca over dot-com for strategic reasons," Mr. Ahad added. He predicts a continuing growth rate of 20 per cent for dot-ca domains, which by regulation can only be registered by Canadian residents and organizations.

A study conducted for CIRA by The Strategic Counsel in 2001 reported that, if given a choice, 71 per cent of Canadian would prefer to visit a dot-ca site. When all respondents were asked if they would most prefer to register a dot-ca domain name or a dot-com domain name, they were five times more likely to say they prefer dot-ca than to say they prefer dot-com (51 per cent against 10 per cent).

 

[Rubber Duck]

Can't we just enjoy a nice, sexy media article without getting into a speculative, theoretical pissing contest. Let's comment on the contents of the article itself (and its significances if any) without trying to determine the future direction of world's ecommerce for once?

Well for me if we cannot deduce anything from it in terms of the future direction of ecommerce, then it has no value!

Best Regards
Dave Wrixon

 

[DaddyHalbucks]

Can't we just enjoy a nice, sexy media article without getting into a speculative, theoretical pissing contest. Let's comment on the contents of the article itself (and its significances if any) without trying to determine the future direction of world's ecommerce for once?

It would be nice, but people have their agendas.

It's ridiculous to see the biggest business article EVER about .COMs and domaining twisted into some bizarre and tortured justification for exactly what the article doesn't talk about --IDNs, alt TLDs, and CC TLDs.

For the record, the article is about the success of speculating in...[drum roll please]...

... .COM !!!

 

[Rubber Duck]

just another example of the erosion of .com

As of yesterday, there were 603,000 dot-ca registrations held by individuals and organizations in Canada, according to Gabriel Ahad, director of communications at the Canadian Internet Registration Authority. "Since July, 2000, the [Canadian] market share for dot-coms has dropped by 14 per cent, while dot-ca's share grew by 13 per cent."

Lies, Damn Lies and Statistics!

Clearly if Dot com had say 90% of the market and then without further registrations of any other extensions dot CA took 13% of the market, which has expanded to accommodate it, the size of the market would be 115% of its previous size

The dot com share would therefore drop to about 78%. This would happen without any encroachment from the other extension which obviously account for the other 2%. None of this mean that the dot com register has shrunk in real-term and some loss of market share would be entirely expected with the emergence of dot info and dot biz.

I think this merely goe so show that dot CA has a long way to go and dot Info and dot Biz have had minimal impact!

Best Regards
Dave Wrixon

 

[sasquatch]

Here's my agenda; a question for all insiders:

Why do so many biggest players (NA, BD, ULT, VA...) almost exclusively only buy secondary domains from drops (for thousands) and NEVER from forums like this (for hundreds or less)?

Why they don't want to buy a name here for xx or xxx, but they spend x,xxx for the same name in drops?

Are the names perceived less valuable if bought for less money? Are their dicks measured bigger just because the names are bought in needlessly inflated drop competitions?

There certainly has to be some sort of catch here, or else it wouldn't make any basic, logical business sense at all?

Enlighten me, anyone please?

 

[Rubber Duck]

The answer is simple. If they have bought in a drop Auction they can claim the prestige of having won a competitive battle and are not open to accusations of having paid more than the market price! Beside which many may not have heard of DNForums. They also do not have to deal with Transfers and Escrow which they may not understand.

I do share your frustration as I drop stuff that goes on to sell for good prices, but I have to admit, if I were to hang on to some of these they wouldn't sell for me in a hundred years! I stopped bidding at drop auctions several years ago as you end up paying 3 time what you can sell them for!

Best Regards
Dave Wrixon

 

[fundraiser]

Here's my agenda; a question for all insiders:

Why do so many biggest players (NA, BD, ULT, VA...) almost exclusively only buy secondary domains from drops (for thousands) and NEVER from forums like this (for hundreds or less)?

Why they don't want to buy a name here for xx or xxx, but they spend x,xxx for the same name in drops?

Are the names perceived less valuable if bought for less money? Are their dicks measured bigger just because the names are bought in needlessly inflated drop competitions?

There certainly has to be some sort of catch here, or else it wouldn't make any basic, logical business sense at all?

Enlighten me, anyone please?

Time = money. Catching is automatic, bidding is automatic, payment is automatic. Here you have to deal with people and people take time. Not worth the aggravation for them either.