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I posted this on a private domain board today, but I thought I should make a short post about it on my blog, too. Since ICANN has decided to open up the TLD space, I’ve been asking myself this question:
If a company (e.g. Nike) is offered Shoes.com and .SHOES, which will it choose?
It is the answer to that question that could determine the aftermarket value of generic .com domains in the future.
Widely reported by now, some different opinions expressed. On its Paris meeting this week, ICANN has announced that it is considering to allow individuals and companies to create their own top-level domains.
Lots of companies, organizations and cities have applied for their own extensions in the past years, including Berlin (.berlin) and New York City (.nyc). Not one of these TLDs has been accepted yet, but ICANN might be changing its mind very soon.
If the ICANN board votes in favor of an open domain system, we will see hundreds if not thousands of new TLDs being created. Especially corporate users will love having their company name as a domain extension.
For example, eBay could use .eBay to promote its various auction categories: Movies.eBay, Coins.eBay, Sports.eBay, Cameras.eBay and so on. It would also be possible to create generic TLDs like .auto and .money. These gTLDs would probably be highly coveted… who knows whether ICANN is be going to auction these off to the highest bidders in order to raise even more cash. Another possibility is the creation of geographic extensions, as mentioned above. The cities could then make money by selling domains to end users or by creating business directories: Lawyers.NYC, Doctor.NYC, CarDealer.NYC, Money.NYC, Stocks.NYC, News.NYC, etc.
You see, there will be lots of opportunities if ICANN decides to give this a green light in the end. But what would this mean for today’s domain industry? First of all, registrants who are going to register a domain under .com that isn’t available anymore will decide to switch to another TLD and they might then choose one those that have been newly created. It is likely that they will have plenty of possibilities to choose from, because I expect a run for generic and geographic top-level domains. This means there will be more substitutes for .com.
Now, I’m not sure what to think of this myself. It could be that new TLDs will strengthen DotCom, as has been the case in the past, but an open domain system could also increase people’s awareness of other TLDs and therefore cause quite the contrary: a decrease in demand for .com domains.
On the other hand, it is also very well possible that traffic to .com domains will go up, when people looking for Cars.NewExtension, for instance, type in Cars.com. Another possibility would be that people will respond negatively to an overwhelmingly large number of TLDs and opt for good old .com, which in turn would have a positive influence on the value of DotCom domains again.
Well, nothing has been decided, yet, so speculating won’t help. But it has been reported that ICANN is going to make a decision this year, which means that we could have an open TLD system as early as 2009. I have read that the price for your own TLD is expected to be in the range between €25,000 and €250,000, so it would be mostly companies and well-funded individuals getting their own extensions. But by acting as a registry and selling domains under their TLDs to others, all this could result in hundreds of thousands of additional domain names being registered within the next few years. Where this will leave us remains to be seen.
Someone must have been telling lies about Josef K., he knew he had done nothing wrong but, one morning, he was arrested. - The Trial, Franz Kafka
George Kirikos has always done an excellent job spotting potential dangers for the domain community. Now he has found a new request by Afilias for a registry service relating to the “abusive” use of .info domain names. DotInfo has been a popular top-level domain with spammers, because the .info annual registration fee has usually been lower than the renewal fee of other TLDs.
Although the policy request has been made with good intentions, it might also embody a danger for upright domain registrants, as George points out:
… While most folks (including myself) probably care very little about the .info TLD, my concern is that any bad implementation in .info might be copied or used as a precedent in other more important TLDs, in particular .com run by VeriSign.
In particular:
Pursuant to Section 3.6.5 of the RRA, Afilias reserves the right to deny, cancel or transfer any registration or transaction, or place any domain name(s) on registry lock, hold or similar status, that it deems necessary, in its discretion;…
I would be against giving VeriSign (if the model was copied to .com) that discretionary power over my company’s domains, especially the “right to cancel.” What exactly is “illegal”? In China, I’m sure there are many things that are illegal that are perfectly legal in Canada, the USA or the EU. …
This is, in fact, a very dangerous clause, because it would give the registry the uncontrolled right to take domains away from their owners. If the policy is accepted by ICANN, it will dramatically curtail the rights of domain holders. The domain registries already have too much power and a monopoly that allows them to virtually set prices as they wish, but the policy proposed by Afilias would only make things worse, and it would make investing in the domain industry a very risky undertaking many outside investors would shrink away from.
Click here to find out how to submit public comments on this issue to ICANN.
(via CircleID)
Frankfurt-based domain registry Denic does not allow the registration of two-letter .de domain names. But German carmaker Volkswagen has always wanted to own VW.de, because the company is widely known under this acronym and thus wants to protect its brand on the Internet.
That’s why Volkswagen has recently sued Denic for the domain. The Frankfurt court now entitled Volkswagen to VW.de and said Denic would have to make the domain name available to the carmaker.
There are only few exceptions to the blocking of two-letter .de domains, namely ix.de, hq.de and Deutsche Bahn’s DB.de. All of these domains were registered many years ago when the Internet was still in its infancy.
The Frankfurt court has made a decision in favor of Volkswagen, because Denic’s not-for-registration rule would discrimate Volkswagen and its well-known brand name. Denic has appealed against the judgement, but the appeal was rejected. Against this rejection Denic has filed another complaint, so the court ruling isn’t effective yet. But as it looks the ruling will not be revoked, which means that Volkswagen will most likely be the owner of VW.de very soon.
Although the court decision does not force Denic to make two-letter domains available for registration in general, it is possible that other companies will now sue Denic for their company acronyms, too. Will it only be a question of time until two-letter .de domains will be made publicly available? Just as two-letter or one-letter .com domains, they’re very rare and highly valuable. Denic’s take on this subject seems to be clear, but I think the German registry provider could also be going to auction the remaining two-letter domains off in the future. We will see.
Eric Rice of Domains for Media has launched his new project DNCartoons.com. The site offers a satirical look at the domain name industry. On DNCartoons.com you can also subscribe to Eric’s new domains for sale newsletter, which he is going to send out to more than 2,000 domain buyers.
I’ve subscribed to all domain newsletters I’ve ever come across and I think you should sign up for Eric’s, too. Eric is a nice guy and a successful domainer who was General Manager of domain registrar BulkRegister.com and who manages a large portfolio of quality domains. He also helped to get the much publicized Cowboys.com acquisition off the ground.
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DNCartoons.com Launches to Provide New Channel Matching Domain Sellers with Buyers
Get an Edge on Buying and Selling Coveted Domains and Enjoy a Few Good Inside Laughs at the Domain Name and Internet Industry
June 17, 2008 – Annapolis, MD – DomainsForMedia (DomainsForMedia.com), experts in domain name monetization, leasing and sales, today announced that its founder, Eric Rice, formerly General Manager of Bulkregister.com, will produce a blog and domain sales newsletter at www.DNCartoons.com to promote the sale of domains from his personal portfolio and those from other domain sellers. The blog will feature satirical cartoons about the domain industry, while the newsletter will showcase domains for sale at reasonable prices. Readers can submit cartoon concepts for DNCartoons.com to consider producing. Those cartoon concepts produced and published will feature the reader’s web site and marketing message. Sellers may submit domains to be considered for inclusion in the newsletter.
DomainsForMedia believes that at times domain sellers might be better served by direct selling methods rather than auctions or a listing on a domain mass listing web site. In some live auctions the “bid up” promised never materializes. As a result, many domains only have one bidder and often go for the reserve price. Some domain listing web sites have become unwieldy, with millions of domains listed. Many sellers on such sites are too focused on selling names at unrealistically high prices for today’s market. In the DNCartoons.com domain sales newsletter, a seller will set a fair and reasonable price and benefit from having their domain promoted to over 2,000 (and growing) of the world’s top domain buyers.
In the next few months the newsletter’s readership is expected to grow to 4,000 subscribers through a variety of marketing efforts. Those who sign up at DNCartoons.com will receive the free newsletter and gain the inside track on domains for sale.
“Our goal is to promote domains that are truly priced right, or even a little under for the market, so they will sell. We anticipate generating a higher sell through ratio than other selling platforms,” states Rice. “The concept of featuring cartoons and humor on our blog will make it fun for readers and help us to expand our already robust list of 2,000 domain buyers. Sellers will appreciate the added value we will offer from our growing list of qualified and active buyers.”
In 2007, Rice brokered over $4 million dollars worth of single domains, domain portfolios and web sites. Many of these deals were completed in non-disclosed transactions that were never posted on industry sales tracking website. Rice’s success demonstrates that small domain brokers do play a significant role in the growing domain aftermarket.
In related news, today DomainsForMedia.com also announced that it has secured another $2 million dollars to buy domains and domain portfolios. In 2007, DomainsForMedia.com purchased names such as Snowboards.com, Skateboards.com and Surfboards.com in partnership with Mike Mann (www.MikeMann.com ) and WashingtonVC (www.WashingtonVC.com). These domains are currently under development. Future purchases will be of the same caliber; high potential generic domains, traffic generating domains and miscellaneous domains with resell potential.
Recall Media Group’s new Bido.com domain auction service has launched today. The first auction will begin in about one hour, so get ready if you’d like to participate. The first domain to be auctioned off is DiscountImages.com. This should be a solid $x,xxx domain and the reserve price is only $1!
Bido offers a novel service in many aspects. First of all, there will only be one domain auction per day. With many domain owners having complained about too many domains in live and online auctions in the past, I think this is a great idea because this way the domain will get maximum attention. Secondly, all auctions start at $1. Yes, that’s correct. I’ve read some negative comments regarding this week’s domain auction inventory on domain forums, saying most of the domains offered for sale were of low quality. Quality always is relative. If you attend a live domain auction there will be many domains sold at $xxx,xxx+ reserve prices, but at Bido all domains start at $1 only. DiscountImages.com or GoldAuction.com starting at $1, what’s wrong with that? These are valuable domains without inflated reserves. Another novum is that Bido has some domain experts who publicly post their opinion or evaluations of the domains on Bido’s website, so that potential buyers can read them and get insight from domain industry pros.
Overall, Bido.com looks really promising to me and I wish Sahar and everyone else involved best of luck!
Don’t forget, the DiscountImages.com auction begins soon!
Global registry operator VeriSign has published its June 2008 Domain Name Industry Brief (PDF). According to the report, the base of domain registrations has grown 26 percent in the past twelve months and six percent quarter over quarter. This marks yet another significant increase in the number of domain registrations and is further proof that there is no slowdown in sight.
There are now more than 162 million domain names registered; .com is still number one, followed by ccTLDs .de (Germany) and .cn (China). VeriSign reports that Germany’s .de TLD comes in second, but I have already heard reports elsewhere that China’s .cn has overtaken .de. Anyway, both of these country-code domains are highly popular and they will continue to grow as more and more people in Asia get reliable Internet access and IDNs (internationalized domain names) become more popular and more widely used.
But not only .cn has experienced double-digit growth quarter over quarter (it grew 23 percent), Poland’s .pl, Spain’s .es, Russia .ru and France’s .fr have seen large growth as well. There are big opportunities in local domain markets, so if you find yourself in the position to invest in foreign language domains you might want to look into this more thoroughly. Personally, I’ve recently been watching the German IDN market, although I haven’t committed to any investments, yet. China, Poland and Russia look very interesting too, in my opinion.
Another growth market one should keep an eye on is India. VeriSign says that, despite the fact that the .com and .in TLDs are well-known and established in India, most people still don’t understand what domains are and what services to associate with them. Therefore, the vast majority of domain registrants in India has been medium and large businesses. So there is lots of potential untapped when it comes to small businesses and private domain registrations. As soon as these groups will begin to demand more domain names too, both the primary and the secondary market will become even more interesting. At the end of the first quarter of 2008, there was a total of 1.2 million domain registrations in India, which represents a 46 percent increase over the same time last year. About 60 percent of these domains are .com or .net domains and 40 percent .in domains. I expect the number of domain registrations as well as the number of aftermarket domain sales in India to grow at similarly high rates in the future. Investing early could yield higher returns than waiting until demand for and knowledge about domains in India has finally gone up.
ICANN has made an announcement that they were looking for comments on the proposed framework [PDF, 73K, opens in new window] for the allocation of single-character domain names, which ICANN has developed. In addition, ICANN is asking for comments on the best use of funds from the allocation.
ICANN is proposing an auction mechanism, which might be the best solution as everybody will have a chance to place a bid and get his desired one-character domain, such as A.COM, G.COM, Y.COM and so on. These domains are extremely sought-after and other companies have proposed allocation frameworks to ICANN in the past, including European domain aftermarket Sedo.
As for the use of funds, ICANN is proposing a disbursement towards “areas of public good for the Internet community”. Not sure about the exact value of a single-letter domain, but considering how rare and brandable they are I’d say they could quite possibly attract offers higher than $1 million each, which would result in a total outcome of more than $25 million.
ICANN has also announced that they selected Power Auctions LLC as their auction design consultant, which means the company could get the green light to manage the one-letter domain auctions.
When I just tried to go to Gmail.com I was blocked and got the following error message:
We can’t provide service under the Gmail name in Germany; we’re called Google Mail here instead.
If you’re traveling in Germany, you can access your mail at http://mail.google.com.
Oh, and we’d like to link the URL above, but we’re not allowed to do that either. Bummer.
For general information about Google, please visit www.google.com or www.google.de.
Now, I knew Google hasn’t been allowed to promote its email service under the Gmail name in Germany due to trademark issues, but it had always been possible to access my Gmail account via Gmail.com. Unfortunately, as it seems, Google is now blocking German users from using this domain name so that they will have no choice other than to use the longer, bulky URL above. Alternatively, one can also go to GoogleMail.com, but this is still not as nice as Gmail.com, in my opinion.
The Gmail.com forward is still working for incoming emails, which is good, and I hope Google will continue to offer this @gmail.com to @googlemail.com catch-all function for German users. Otherwise it might result in emails being sent to wrong recipients or not being delivered at all.
Marchex Launches Marchex Adhere to Better Serve National and Local Advertisers;
Further Extends Reach through New Distribution Relationships
New pay-per-click advertising channel delivers a national presence and local impact
SEATTLE, WA - June 9, 2008 - Marchex, Inc. (NASDAQ: MCHX, MCHXP), a local search and advertising company, today launched Marchex Adhere™, a new pay-per-click advertising channel that provides advertisers and agencies with exclusive placement on hundreds of premium publisher Web sites and on Marchex’s OpenList® network. Marchex is also adding several new premium publishers and locally focused Web sites to Marchex Adhere, further expanding the breadth and depth of the network and enhancing Marchex’s leadership position in local search and advertising.
Marchex Adhere allows advertisers of any size and budget to reach a unique, highly-qualified audience at scale:
“Local advertising isn’t just for small businesses,” said Pete Christothoulou, Marchex Chief Strategy Officer. “National advertisers are responsible for more than two-thirds of the $100 billion in local ad spending¹. With the increasing fragmentation in the local market, it is nearly impossible for national advertisers to take full advantage of the tremendous local opportunity and find enough quality traffic at scale to fulfill their campaign needs. Marchex Adhere provides a single source for advertisers and agencies to reach exclusive national, vertical and local traffic.”
“Many of our clients are increasingly looking to build their brand awareness on a national level while leveraging that brand to drive transactions at the local level,” said Michael Lee, Director, Strategic Partnerships, DoubleClick Performics. “The ability to target premium publisher Web sites as well as vertical and local search sites in one source enables us to deliver additional quality traffic, at volume, to our clients in a very cost-effective manner.”
Marchex is one of the biggest players in local search and advertising. Currently, more than 65,000 national and local advertisers use Marchex’s advertising products and services to reach consumers online, including the more than 30 million people monthly who visit Marchex’s OpenList² network to make more-informed local buying decisions.
National Presence, Local Impact
Marchex Adhere allows advertisers and agencies to select site-specific or category-based placements on more than 200 premium publisher Web sites including BusinessWeek Online, Bankrate.com and Kiplinger.com, as well as keyword-targeted placements on top search, vertical and local Web sites, including Marchex’s OpenList.
In conjunction with today’s launch, Marchex is adding several new premium publisher and local Web sites to Marchex Adhere through new and expanded distribution partnerships, including:
“Marchex’s relationships with top-tier publishers combined with our own local traffic and high level of client service helps advertisers and agencies obtain both a national presence and local impact online,” added Christothoulou. “According to recent data, local searches are growing more than three times faster than other searches and 86% of search engine users search locally for products and services³. Marchex’s laser-sharp focus on local, combined with the reach, breadth and volume of our traffic enables advertisers to capitalize on the local opportunity now and as it continues to grow exponentially.”
With the launch of Marchex Adhere, Marchex subsidiaries, IndustryBrains and Enhance Interactive are unified under the powerful Marchex Adhere brand.
(Source: Company Press Release)
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