The following link most likely will only work today, April Fools day. It may be an indication that Google thinks that the new GTLD’s are somewhat backwards.
Try a search at https://Com.Google and see what happens.
I just discovered the following and wanted to share. The domain .com.com gets alot of traffic. This means if you add .com to any url ending in .com (ex. cnn.com becomes cnn.com.com), you will not end up on your intended page, but end up on the webpage for .com.com. I remember analyzing that domains traffic many year ago and was impressed by the volume. Unfortunately the PPC conversions were weak so we passed on it.
It seems that.xyz currently uses these accidental typos to redirect to a domain sales page for .xyz. I think the video on the page is well done. I’d love to know how its converting.
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.
I just received an email from some longtime industry friends that they have formed the .co.com registry. 3 greats guys, all leaders in the industry. I’m looking forward to seeing it grow.
Hi Larry,
I hope this email finds you well!
I’m very excited to pass along the attached press release and photos, announcing that we are setting up a registry for co.com domain names. Ken Hansen has resigned his position at Neustar to lead this effort as CEO of “Co.com, LLC”, with myself as President and Gregg McNair as Chairman.
The three of us chose a select group of industry insiders including yourself to lead the announcement of this news and we thank you in advance for your support!
Ken is available for more information at:
Ken Hansen
ken@co.com
Best Wishes,
~Paul
————————
Paul Goldstone
President – Co.com, LLC
Changes at Twitter is another good sign for the .co tld.
Per twitter’s email that I received:
“t.co URL wrapping
In the coming weeks, we will be expanding the roll-out of our link wrapping service t.co, which wraps links in Tweets with a new, simplified link. Wrapped links are displayed in a way that is easier to read, with the actual domain and part of the URL showing, so that you know what you are clicking on. When you click on a wrapped link, your request will pass through the Twitter service to check if the destination site is known to contain malware, and we then will forward you on to the destination URL. All of that should happen in an instant.
You will start seeing these links on certain accounts that have opted-in to the service; we expect to roll this out to all users by the end of the year. When this happens, all links shared on Twitter.com or third-party apps will be wrapped with a t.co URL.
What does this mean for me?
A really long link such as http://www.amazon.com/Delivering-Happiness-Profits-Passion-Purpose/dp/0446563048 might be wrapped as http://t.co/DRo0trj for display on SMS, but it could be displayed to web or application users as amazon.com/Delivering- or as the whole URL or page title.
You will start seeing links in a way that removes the obscurity of shortened links and lets you know where each link will take you.
When you click on these links from Twitter.com or a Twitter application, Twitter will log that click. We hope to use this data to provide better and more relevant content to you over time.”
Last night I went for a cinco de mayo party. Yes, it was the day after but with 30 of us that’s the only way to get a table. As we sat and talked I noticed that only the older men (over 30) were wearing watches. In addition, everyone came after work, so I was surprised not to see anyone wearing a tie. It made me start to think. When i spoke to a few of the under 30, I asked if any of them owned a watch. Only one did and said it was a gift from his dad. He told me he never wears it since there is no need. He has an iphone that he can check for time. Why would he need to wear one he asked?
Would I start a business in either of those areas, no. Thats not saying you could not have a successful business. Look at Rick Latona. He started a site called webuywatches.com and is doing fairly well. However, it is not his only business.
We have seen alot change on the web. Netscape was the first major browser and had at one point virtually all of the market. That is no longer the case. Yahoo used to be the premier search engine on the web. That is no longer the case.
There are also trends showing upside of various products and industries. An art auction at Sotherbys the other day, someone purchased the highest recorded sale at auction for a painting. Over 100 million USD for a Picasso. People are spending that much because it is an amazing and unique work of art that cant be replicated and whose value has shown increasing over time. The same thing can be said about generic domains. They are unique and cant be replicated. A generic domain is like a fine piece of art. The trend for domains is increased registrations especially with all the new tld’s. As more domains come into the market place it only raises value for the prime generic .com’s as they are domaining’s answer to fine art.
I think the rollout of the new TLD’s is going to be a very interesting time. It may feel like the California gold rush of the 1840’s. Some will strike it rich while other will end up with fools gold. Either way there will be battles over the same piece of property, in this case the TLD. With that said I read this morning an interested article that puts the TLD . gay in the center of an ethical debate. It seems that a gay organization is looking to get that extension but has found out that a “a German businessman, Alexander Schubert, who is reportedly a heterosexual, has also begun the process of registering the same top-level domain with ICANN”.
Should the .GAY extension be run by a gay organization. What right does this specific organization have to the extension over another gay or non gay organization. What happens if the businessman has extensive domain background partners with a known Gay group to help start the extension. Would that me better? Did they have a detective follow the German businessman around and take pictures to show his reported heterosexuality? This will be an interesting fight.