Last week I was at Namescon. First I have to give Richard, Jodi and Jothan a huge congratulations. They put on the first of what I think will be EPIC shows.
Much discussion was placed on the new Gtld’s verse the existing tld’s (mostly .com’s) Of course there were many that were looking forward to their arrival. These positive folks mostly were represented by those that were involved financially in the process. The .com lovers were mostly older domainers that had seen .mobi, .xxx and others fail miserably for the investors, but made lots of dough for the registries, auction houses and registrars.
I do think some Gtld’s will be a winner for all involved including domain investors. Others will help the average business looking for a simple domain that they could not otherwise get at an affordable price.
Speaking with a long time domainer today, he told me that Gtld stood for “Going to Lose Dough”. At first I laughed but I had to commend his reasoning. “Its a lot like Las Vegas”, he said. “The house are the Gtlds and the investors are the gamblers. Since the house usually comes out ahead, many investors may have found the meaning of Gtld.”
It’s only a matter of time to see if he’s right or wrong.
At the risk of sounding like an old-timer, I remember reading Variety magazine before Francis Ford Coppola released “Appocalypse Now” and the film was long overdue and way over budget and the headline of Variety read: “Appocalypse Never”. This post reminds me of that.
And this new gtld thing feels to my old bones like people are going to like it, and its going to be big in time, so let me say that i think gTLD stands for: “Getting Long Dollars”. Doesn’t fit as well but i think these folks are going to make money.
@MarkA
Thanks for your comment. I do agree that over time, some of the gtld’s will indeed have high registrations and used by end users, not just held by domainers. Which of these they will be is the debatable question.
Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?
Anything is possible
gtld = .fail
lol – catchy headline and good article!
@Rostker thank you for your thoughts and wisdom
@Mason Your right, anything is possible.
What’s good is that any additional businesses that take a stab at building a website on any domain extension only helps all domainers in the long run capitalize on overall growth of destination/company sites. It may in the long run halt and ebb the flow of businesses exclusively running on or only displaying their Facebook page URL in advertising and actual use. Facebook’s long-range goal is obviously…abandon your website, only use Facebook to connect with the public…so maybe the gTLD’s will in some small reduce the size of the 800 pound gorilla to 500 pounds.
thanks hugh. Great observation.
gtld going to lose dough.
i think thats true of the the lambs lead to the wolves who buy 10-100 of these thinking they will be like the .com early investors. the registries, they will do well early and over time on revenue, but to be profitable they will shrink marketing at the time the tld’s need it most, right after the launches.
so a new tlds investor has to realize they are in compeition with the registry for the first five years, and the registry’s have unlimited inventory with zero cost. So if you buy a premium at $1000, and want to sell for $5000, they may be selling the same $1000 premiums for $500 to keep revenue string in 6 months.
,com values increased because in essence the registry was “sold out” per se in 1998. So in that case the registry only made reg fee in the future, and the specualtor and investors made money. When will a new tld “sell out”, not for awhile; and its possible resale values will only increase after all nw tlds first launch, and then sellout.
page howe
@page – very strong argument against investing gtld’s. hopefully someone from the other side of the fence will give their thoughts on what you said.