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Will New TLD's Affect Short .com Domains? |
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Thursday, 26 June 2008 |
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Hurry, hurry, step right up and be one of the first on the block to own your own name or whatever else you can think of. For just $100,000 and a boatload of cash for maintaining your own registry, you too can get your own personalized domain name. Want a new car, get .car, want a new house, get .house, want .sex, well that may be a possibility too. The internet is a boomtown again and new real oestate is opening up bigtime.
However, what does all this mean to the average short domain collector? Will short .com domains become more in demand or less in demand?
I see it as a way for domain registrars to continue to boost profits. However, in general I think that these types of domains are too limiting for most businesses. For example a local business in San Francisco called Mario Family's Pit Stop would be better off with MFPS.com than any other extension and here's why. Mario's sells .gas, .liquor, .maps, .snack foods, .lottotickets, .gifts, .tshirts, does .autorepairs, and .smogchecks, it also has a .publicrestroom among other things. The business next door sells .furniture, .appliances .computers, .cellphones and does in home .computerrepairs and .satteliteinstallations. (Sadly, the business across the street just spent $5,000 to sponsor and regulate their own tld ".wangsimportedpearlnecklaces" and they chose a really great 2 letter domain name..."GO" You can reach them at http: //GO.WangsImportedPearlNecklaces, but, they quickly found out the pearl business lacks luster and they want to start selling gold charms instead. Unfortunately they can't find anyone to buy their expensive TLD and the registrars don't issue refunds or partial credits.
The LLLL.com market is safe (for now) in my opinion. It is a niche market and many of the players are rare .com domain collectors or businesses that appreciate the diversity that a .com offers. They are not making any more LLLL.coms and people love to collect things. Domain collector's are no different than those people who enjoy collecting cars, stamps, paintings, coins, etc. The fact that they are producing new cars, stamps, paintings, coins, etc., each day does not devalue a rare collection, and in fact, it tends to gain in value as more people enter the marketplace and become educated.
.Com in our opinion is still safe as no other extension will ever have it's legacy and power. It's got worldwide recognition in the global marketplace as a symbol for internet commerce. It transcends the language barriers unlike .info, .tv, .name, .me or any other extension that they could come up with in any language because people worldwide recognize recognize it as being synomous with the internet. It can be used by any person, from any country, for anything for just a few dollars a year.
Google has over 25 billion results for .com (the letter I has 10 billion and the letter A 20 billion.) It's been the leader since the beginning of the internet and it's still the leader. Almost every major corporation has a .com domain. Further, those whom were late to the game often will pay big bucks to aquire a .com or start a UDRP action to aquire a .com.
With the above considered, I feel pretty confident that .com will remain king for quite some time.
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