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Very good post on Jay’s blog today: Transparency in the Domain Industry

For as long as I have been in this industry, I have been trying to promote transparency and market efficiencies. That is one of the reasons I started blogging. A lot of domainers choose to remain in shadows and I do not fault them for that. I take the exact opposite stance. If you have nothing to hide, then transparency is a good thing. The general public scorns domainers because they have built empires where nothing used to exist. Most earlier domainers saw the vision that domains would become valuable and they registered them like there was no tomorrow. The more generic the better. Domainers had no problem laying money on the line to secure domains from other early registrants. For domains to reach the same prices that we see on real property we need to see transparency, market efficiency, and clear laws.

2007 has been an important year for the domain industry; several top domainers started blogging this year and that’s probably the reason why there are more discussions about current issues in the domain business now. Transparency is one of these important issues. If you want to read more about it, I suggest you go to Michael’s blog, as he’s written a lot about transparency in domain parking. Transparency is not only important to those in the industry, but also in consideration of those looking in from the outside. It’s the people on the outside, like Wall Street investors and Madison Avenue marketers, who got a wrong perception of the domain industry, because there has been lots of badmouthing in the past. Making domaining a more transparent industry, making it more attractive to new investors and business from the “outside” is one of the challenges domainers are currently facing.