We're doing great, say dot-London chiefs ... Unfortunately, few agree Operator of the dot-London internet registry, Minds & Machines, has told investors that it is "highly satisfied" with registrations in the new domain name extensions it operates – "particularly from a revenue perspective." Unfortunately, the stock market and domain name industry don't seem to agree. Announcing that it would …
Our clients used to buy the complete TLD set when it was com/net/org/co.uk/org.uk.
The bigger ones continued as the TLD space grew. All have given up as they exploded in the last couple of years.
Worse, if they aren't going to have them all then why have any duplicates? We have seen a widespread abandonment of the org/org.uk space by commercial owners. Whilst this may be good for a few noncommercial registrants it has put our domain business in decline despite an increase in registrants.
We have yet to register a dot london domain. Some were interested but stepped away when they spotted the blatant exploitative business model. Makes Nominet look like pussy cats.
... nearly impossible.
As an equestrian, I thought I'd look at registering a .horse domain for our club. Then, for the heck of it, one for my horse's name.
For the club, it's 19 Euro/year. For my horse's name.... 2,000 Euro/year! Wha...?! Can't find what the criteria are.
I'm his carrot provider, we have to renegotiate the contract if I have to become his agent as well.
It did occur to me after posting that he shares the name with a certain British war hero of the Napoleonic wars, hence a UK registry "hammering" that domain with a premium. Oh well, I'll keep an eye on it and wait for the air to come out of that particular over-inflated balloon.
"For the club, it's 19 Euro/year. For my horse's name.... 2,000 Euro/year! Wha...?! Can't find what the criteria are."
Worse - I started looking at the cost of different London 'villages'. The prices varied widely. Upset to find nice chic sydenham.london was cheaper than neighbouring upstarts south circular ridden foresthill.london. but then if you take your lead from Foxtons ...
You do feel cheated when the ransom demanded is too low ;-)
Ok, so before all this came along, you could have a good guess at domains....
International-company-name.com - a safe-ish bet (yes, there are squatters, etc, but you had a high success rate).
Want to see them in your own country, change .com to .co.uk (If you live round these parts).
Not a company, but a not-for profit, no worries, there's org... You could kinda guess. Now it can be .anybloodything - and I don't see how consumers/interested parties will get to your site by guessing.
I understand it allows resellers to make money from the gullible, but if you are considering one of these domains, ask yourselves what benefits the investment will make to your customers?
. . . ask yourselves what benefits the investment will make to your customers?
If you have to ask, you may as well get one. Or you could just say no . . . and still not ask. That's probably easier.
Benefits? It makes a handy way to filter customers based on their typing skills. I can imagine telling customers over the phone "just go to salesdepot-dot-Antidisestablishmentarianism" Seriously, the only way to "get these new TSL's" is to imagine a room full of marketing guys just buzzing with fantastic new ideas.
"I don't see how consumers/interested parties will get to your site by guessing."
You don't. That's what google/bing/et al is for. Guessing didn't even work back in the old days when there were so few domains you may have tried to guess.
"I understand it allows resellers to make money from the gullible, but if you are considering one of these domains, ask yourselves what benefits the investment will make to your customers?"
Nothing. If they're using Google to look for you, they just click the link. If it's a Q-Code, they don't click a damn thing. If it's written in a magazine, they just repeat it. With the market flooded with .com domains, it'll get past the 'curious' stage really quickly.
My point is, stapling a huge price tag on something (especially when the customer doesn't see any of that) means nothing - it does the same job as all the garden variety TLDs.
The days of someone owning the .com and wildly guessing that to be so are long gone. You google them, nowadays. I remember when novatech.com was actually a military supplier whereas novatech.co.uk was the company that sells computer stuff. After the third time you do that, you no longer assume and you Google or remember the domain.
Hell, people don't even know how to type in addresses any more, they just google them - I'm not joking. People will Google "GMail" and then click the link they know works.
Domains are dead. Certainly owning the .com for a brand is not guaranteed by a long shot. And the home idiots are googling what they want, rather than typing in the address anyway.
In that climate, there's absolutely no need whatsoever for a domain name besides vanity. Let's call these what they are - vanity domains. And bought by the same people that want to own B1TCH as a number plate.
I can't remember the last time I actually bothered to type in an address that wasn't written down exactly (e.g. in an advert), or well-known to me. Nobody takes a stab at .com addresses "just in case". That's a perfect way to end up on a scam site.
Technologically-aware people like us often overestimate how much the normal population understand (or care). They think that "www." is what signifies a website. They don't know what that rubbish at the start with colons and slashes is all about. The bit at the end means little.
And anyway, as any examination of webserver logs will demonstrate, lots of them use a URL by typing it into Google's search field.
"Interesting" URLs are useless already, and will soon become as irrelevant to the public as numerical IP addresses.
My Mum was firmly of the 'type it into google' variety. I'd be trying to explain something over the phone and I'd tell her to open a browser and type in X and she'd say "do you mean google". Drove me nuts. She stuck with it like glue even when I'd shown her the difference a hundred times. It didn't stop there sadly; chewing broken glass would be more fun than suggesting she 'go to the desktop'.
Weird thing was she was known within her (large) company as the go to person if you were having trouble getting a photocopier or laser printer to behave, she just had this weird knack for them. She was also a dab hand with Quark and Photoshop. Just bizarre really...
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