Comments Off on Breaking News: .pro domain spotted in the wild

Holy Crap! It’s a real live actual .pro domain!

I think I would have an easier time believing it if I had just seen a UFO or sasquatch, but today I actually saw a real live .PRO domain in the real world. It was weird, you know that feeling you get when your eyes are plainly relaying information to your brain but your mind has extreme difficulty parsing it. It was like “WTF is that?” Being in the business over 15 years, I have an eye for domain names that is probably way past compulsive. Over the course of my day I routinely observe, make note of, memorize and lookup dozens of domains. When it comes to domain names very little goes unnoticed to me, so believe me when I tell you this: Read more »

Comments Off on Who Will Be The Big Winners and Losers of the New TLDs?

This is a repost of a guest editorial I wrote for Domain Name News.

When one looks at the track record of introducing new Top Level Domains it is perplexing to see where all the enthusiasm around unlimited new TLDs comes from. So far every attempt to roll one out owes it’s sustenance to purely defensive registrations (.biz, .info) or else it’s degraded into an utter fracas (.jobs) or just plain flopped (.pro)

The latest TLD that isn’t a country code tarting itself up as a pseudo-generic is probably a good indicator of what to expect going forward: .xxx – reviled by the industry it extorts , err, purports to serve and first new TLD that we are seriously considering making a conscious decision not to “grab our name before somebody else does!”. I’m certain it won’t be the last. I believe one of the first things we will see as all this unfolds is a buyers strike in defensive regs. Once that happens everything will go sideways.

So despite the near frenzied hype around these things, I have already gone on record to predict failure for the vast majority of them.

The forthcoming onslaught of TLDs can be divided into roughly three categories: Read more »

Comments Off on How to tell if a new TLD will succeed (and most won’t).

I just read Rick Spence’s “What’s in a name? It could be a fortune on the Internet“, (HT to HybridDomainer), which seemingly dials the needle back to (pick one), 2005 or 2007, or maybe 2010 and drinks the Kool-Aid every domainer has on an IV drip: the notion that fortune and success can be achieved simply by virtue of “owning the right names” (i.e How can we be bankrupt? Don’t we own TenMillionDollars.com?)

Only in this case, he’s talking about the seemingly impending new top-level-domains. “New domain names will rank above the current crop”, he gushes. Really? You mean now I get to defend my trademark in .www, .website, .bank, .toledo, .xxx and .FML ? Great! I think what we will see happen is a buyers’ strike in defensive names. It will become impossible to defend one’s names in all possible TLDs, brand owners will simply stop doing it, defensive registrations in new TLDs collapse, kicking out one of the two legs holding up most new TLDs (the other being speculative registrations). Read more »