Hybrid Domainer

INC: "The Impending Explosion of the Internet"

By: Raymond Hackney

Christina DesMarais Is out today with a story about the new tlds for Inc.com.

Ever thought of the perfect domain name for your business only to find it's already been taken? If so, you'll be happy to know soon there will be a more than 6,000 percent increase in the number of website domains available.

Some will be brand-centric--think .apple for Apple or .citi for Citibank. Others will be generic top-level domains (gTLDs) such as app, .home, .book, .shop, and .design as well as others that will be specific to languages such as Japanese, Arabic and Chinese.

It's a transformation that concerns every company--even start-ups and small businesses--says David Mitnick, founder and president of DomainSkate, an Internet company that focuses on domain name arbitration disputes.

The article goes on to look at why there is a need for these tlds, who wants them and who is against them.

TheDomains.com and DomainIncite.com got a little plug from David Mitnick on good resources companies should follow to keep up on the news.

Read the full article here

Bloomberg: " Harvard.xxx a Brand Cautionary Tale as Web Adds New Names"

By: Raymond Hackney

Bloomberg is out with a piece today about how .xxx is a look into how corporations and other brands will have to protect themselves when new gtlds are available.

From the article:

Harvard University paid as much as $299 to register the last time the World Wide Web’s global overseer added a domain name to familiar ones including .com and .net. Rather than seeking a new opportunity, it signed up to keep harvard.xxx from being used as a porn site.

As the Internet’s first major expansion since 2004 adds suffixes including .fail and .sex to the existing 22 names to the right of the dot, brand owners such as Coca-Cola Co. (KO) and Ford Motor Co. (F) may be similarly forced to pay up to prevent cybersquatting on a massive scale, said Daniel Jaffe, executive vice president of the Association of National Advertisers, a trade group whose members wield 10,000 brands.

The article goes into brand protection,trademark violations, and things such as scam opportunities. The writer did speak to Stuart Lawley from ICM Registry/.XXX and Josh Bourne from FairWinds Partners who laid out examples of which extensions brands will have to be defensive about.

Read the whole article here

 

WhoApi interviews Paul Stahura

By: RH

WhoApi interviews Paul Stahura

WhoApiBlog.com did a very nice interview with Paul Stahura the founder of Enom. 

The interview goes into how he started the company out of his garage.

How buying Clear.com for $6,000 was the greatest investment he ever made.

What his plans are for his new tld company Donuts.

Its a very good read and worth your time. Here is the link

How Victoria's Secret Learned About Domain Law

By: RH

David Mitnick from DomainSkate.com wrote an article on Digiday.com that went into great detail about how Victoria's Secret lost a domain arbitration with a brother in Australia. The article goes on to warn brands they need to be careful about the new tld launch.

David Mitnick wrote:

But do pay attention to the new global top-level domains. Over 1,900 applications were filed for new top-level domain registries this year, and some of these domain-name registries may go live as early as June of 2013. There are built-in protections for brand owners to put their brands into a database that will prevent third parties from registering their names.

Brand owners should also be on the lookout for domain squatters who will try to purchase domains and sell them at a profit, fool consumers or create elaborate phishing scams that can do irreparable damage to the goodwill and public confidence in a brand name. In some cases, trademark holders have sought to prevent this type of abuse at domain names that are identical to certain trademarks. For example, the launch of XXX domains caused a rush of defensive registrations, and the launch of these new gTLDs may yield even more places that brands have to put down their markers — even if they never use them.

You can read the full article here which is worth reading as a domainer or as a brand owner.

Ben Crawford from CentralNic interviews

By: RH

Ben Crawford, CEO of CentralNic did a couple interviews that I did not see and apparently many didn't since there are less than 50 view on each video.

I thought it was interesting that the interviewer in the first video was really spot on about the confusion and wondered how companies would be protected. The interviewer asks Crawford about the prices of domains going down in the secondary market.

The videos are not that long and worth listening too. 

This next video is with the BBC

 

Is Frank Schilling still driving the domain train ?

By: RH

I had two conversations over the weekend with domainers that talked about how they believed Frank was the man to follow, but then in the same conversations they said that the new tlds would flop.

Over the years many domainers have pledged their loyalty and given many props to Frank Schilling. Frank certainly has been a leader and a pioneer in the domain space. When Frank started his blog at SevenMile.com it instantly became must read material. The popularity of the blog and the number of people who took to Frank's words was nothing short of Rock Star proportions.

Frank has gone on to start one of the best and exclusive parking services in the industry. Customers say they are making more with his InternetTraffic.com than they were with previous parking solutions.

Frank wrote on his blog about .com first and foremost.

In 2010 Frank wrote in a post titled "The World Changes But Domain Names Stay The Same"

While nothing lasts forever, .com has had about as good a run as any product, service or thing can have. If you look at the last 25 years or the last 3 for that matter you could have made no better investment than to buy the right domain name and hold it for development, resale or traffic monetization. In the last few years there have been many domain registrants who came out of nowhere and created thriving development businesses. There have been folks who orbited the domain space and did not do well a few years ago, who have finally found their groove now – and there are established players who have taken a tumble, a dressing down.  Dollar for dollar, there are few business which are open to any comer, with any personal or educational background where such an individual can thrive so brilliantly, as they can in the domain name business. That has not changed.

So what of the people who don’t make it in the domain name business? Why doesn’t everyone win?  Whenever I go to social gathering, eventually someone comes out of the woodwork after a glass of wine or two, to admit they have tried their hand at recreational domaining. “I just couldn’t get any traffic to reallyaveragename.com” or “After 6 months of working with terribledomainname.org I just gave up”..  or worse yet, “I just registered thispatternname-2, thispatternname-3, 4, 5, 6 and it’s only a  matter of time before a big company comes knocking to buy them!”. There is an art to the domain name business that you either come to learn, or you don’t.  It’s not about computers and science.  As I’ve said before; we are all in the human behavior business, and there are few domain names in existence, just a few million across all extensions, which are good enough to provide their owner a tactical advantage when selling products and services on the Web.  My absence from blogging and reflection about the domain name business over the last few years has sealed my conviction in that belief.

If you are going to get into the domain name business, you need to get the best names. The best names are not always the most obvious but they are ALWAYS in demand whether the economy is good or bad. The price of these names keeps rising as more people learn about them. If you don’t know what names are good, then ask somebody who does, take a straw poll.  Jon Peters was a successful producer who never read anything.  He couldn’t focus so he had others read for him. That didn’t stop him from becoming one of the most prolific producers of all time.  You don’t need to know what a good domain name is to be a successful domain registrant.  You need to understand people and how they think. If you don’t know what constitutes a good name, ask your friends or family.

In a 2008 article titled "Domain Names New and Old Everybody Sells" Frank wrote:

The supply of meaningful and generic domain names is tight as a drum today. In an effort to increase revenues for itself and to simultaneously ease that demand, ICANN plans to start entertaining proposals for new namespaces in about a year’s time. I predict this will do little to quell the desire for meaningful .com, net and CC TLD names. Corporate IT departments overwhelmed by the task of managing existing .com typos simply won’t be up to the challenge of managing a corporate GTLD such as .COKE or .IBM.  Even with the help of a presently absent killer app from the likes of Godaddy, Enom or Tucows such sideshows will be an uphill push in a recession year. If my hunch is correct then .web .blog and other new .extensions will come to pass and they will marginalize the .info, .us, .eu, .asia and .mobi namespaces just as those namespaces relegated .ws and .cc to obscurity before them.  I predict that .com and other established namespaces will continue to thrive with some very minor marginalization at the fringes . The failure of former would-be contenders such as .travel, .biz and .pro to satiate demand for coveted names, shows us that adding more skim milk to the mix will not stop the cream from rising, and that cream is .com.

In his latest post "Lady Gags and New Tlds, Why Google has Assured Their Future"

Frank left comments like the following to one commenter:

***FS*** .COM has taken root a long time ago. I think that this is it’s high-water mark. Every major brand will have it’s own TLD in a decade. .com is great today because the brands reinforce it. It remains to be seen if that will continue in a .ANYTHING world. I think this has the potential to be a defining moment online, not a flash in the pan. .COM will indeed always be the king of TLDs, in an SLD world – but it will be marginalized on the whole by every new string that gets delegated. FB made a huge mistake missing generic TLDS. Not everyone will want .FACE when they get around to applying for it.

So Frank has changed his opinion but I speak to a lot of people that, 1) still idolize him and 2) Think the new tlds will flop. They are firm in their admiration for Frank and still believe he is "the man" but are in a complete disagreement with his new ideology. Over time it remains to be seen who is right, but it might be time to get on another train for those who are now diametrically opposed to Frank when it comes to .com valuations and the new tlds.

ADI asks if new tlds will fail and Demand Force provides a nice visualization

By: RH

More and more outlets are covering the new tld space. News sites that don't specialize in domaining have been weighing in. Content marketing firms have been focusing on them too.

ADI News did an article yesterday if the new tlds will fail ? From the article: Without the 100% support of the already established domain registration companies, it is unlikely that the new gTLD’s will succeed without massive amounts of marketing dollars.  It may also be too iffy for new registrars to throw money at the potential money pit of the new gTLDs.

Demand Force in partnership with Column Five put out this nice infographic which is a visualization of the new tld landscape, I think for anyone who consults or has clients not sure they even understand the new tlds, that this is a nice piece to forward them.

Courtesy of Demand Force

Forbes: "Why Defensive Domain Name Registrations Aren't a Good Deal for Small Businesses"

By: RH

Eric Goldman a contributor at Forbes did a piece on small business and defensive registrations.

From the article:

This conventional wisdom plays on the worst fears of small businesses: If you don’t buy lots of domain names right now, you will forever lose control of your brand, and then you will lose your customers. Your business will be destroyed because you were too cheap to spend a few extra bucks buying just one more low-cost domain name.

Don’t fall for these scare tactics. They are part of a cynical sales pitch from domain name vendors hoping to get your hard-earned money by manufacturing new opportunities for mischievous domain name registrations—and then making you pay to prevent that possibility.

You can read the whole article here.

Defensive registrations are going to be talked about a lot more with the new tld program coming in the future. How many registrations can a small business afford ? Even if they can afford them, should they register them ? This will prove to be another confusing ip dilemma for many small businesses. They will get consulted and read articles on both sides of the arguement. If you are a pizza business in New York at JoesPizzaNyc.com for example, do you register JoesPizza.Nyc ? What if there is a .pizza and a .nyc and throw in a .restaurant. I think if there are many strings that integrate with one another than the .com really comes out the winner. JoesPizzaNyc.com may want to have the .nyc and the .pizza but he would be foolish to use them in branding imo. They would be pure defensive regs to keep from another Joe in New York who make a the pizza. Again IMO.

Will Tuvalu or Verisign Object to the .TVS Extension ?

By: RH

Will Tuvalu and Verisign object to .TVS

T V Sundram Iyengar & Sons Limited applied for the .tvs extension in the new tld expansion.

A little about T V Sundram from their application:

Introduction to TVS Group
•    TVS group is a 100 year old renowned business conglomerate in India. It has revenues of US$5.7 Billion, for the Financial Year 2012-13.
•    It operates primarily in the automotive sector.  Itʹs businesses are automotive dealerships, Motorola cycles and scooters, logistics services, and financial services.
•    All itʹs businesses operate under the common brand of ʺTVSʺ
•    The group comprises of 40 + companies & employs 25,000 + people and its operations expand internationally to USA, UK, GCC, Indonesia & China.  Itʹs world class manufacturing facilities span 6 countries, across the globe.
•    Its customers include all the top tier car and commercial vehicles world-wide.  It has won supplier of the year awards consistently from several global brands.   The group’s automotive component businesses have global revenues of over 30% of sales.
•    With strong in-house R& D and fueled by robust  manufacturing process driven by Total Quality Management (TQM), Total Productive Maintenance (TPM) & Lean practice, 5 of the group companies were awarded prestigious DEMING award – by Union of Japanese Scientists & Engineers (JUSE).
•    The Group is actively practicing Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) and has touched over 200,000 citizens.  It has created self-reliant and sustainable development of rural communities – in the field of economic development, primary health, education, environment, infrastructure -
 spread across villages – in co-operation with and active participation by the local communities. Last year, some of these initiatives were recognized with national awards.
•    Uniting these multiple businesses is a common ethos of quality, customer service and ethical business practices, that collectively represent the TVS brandʹs value.  The groupʹs brand has been rated as the sixth most trusted Indian brand in recent polls.
•    “TVS” is built up on core ideals of “Trust” with uncompromising “ethics”; (Value) in business performance; and strong passion towards customer requirements (Service).

Mission⁄Purpose of proposed gTLD
•    The proposed gTLD is for internal use by group companies, employees, suppliers, distributors, dealers, service partners and all stake holders including loyal customers within the TVS Group.
 
•    The mission of .TVS is to reinforce the existing identity and brand in the internet web space in a more meaningful way within the eco-system of TVS group and also to– expand the TVS presence in the “online space” both nationally and internationally.
•     The purpose of gLTD is to:

o    Provide a self identity to the  businesses and all stake holders within the TVS Group
o    Strengthen  the professionalism and trust among businesses, customers, dealers and organizations
o    Create a uniquely branded web presence enhancing the service level to the customers

The .tvs extension is obviously similar to the .tv extension which is the country code for Tuvalu and run by Verisign.

Their is an objection provided by ICANN that deals with similar string confusion.

The applied for gTLD string is confusingly similar to an existing TLD or to another applied-for gTLD string. If two confusingly similar TLDs are delegated this could cause user confusion.

See section 3.2.2.1 of the Applicant Guidebook.

It will be interesting to see if Verisign or Tuvalu object to the .tvs extension.

Uniregistry has no plans for Premium Auctions

By: RH

Uniregistry will not use Premium Auctions

One of the most interesting comments from the Frank Schilling post on new tlds, was his reply to @domains, who asked him, "What will you do with the gtlds your group is awarded, become a registrar and sell the registrations, give away free and make money through ads, or …?"

Frank replied,

"We have different plans and pricing for our assorted TLDS and those are public in Question 18 and the other public portions of our applications. We always planned to offer everything in a land rush – without premium auctions, on a first-come, first-served basis, with a not for profit sunrise. You just don’t do that if you aren’t passionate about the very long-term and far sighted success of your extensions. So if you wanted to register domain names in our new TLDS you would get some good ones at registration price on opening day. We have a plan for metered access so it would be a challenge to game us and sweep the good ones up. Our prices are fixed and only indexed to inflation after 5 years.. But in light of the Google applications, I can see many applicants throwing their playbook out the window. I could absolutely see a world where we had to pay 20 or 30 million dollars for a clutch of desirable strings and then be forced to give away second level registrations for 5 years until a plan revealed itself, using the profits from our other businesses and from niche higher value strings to subsidize the fixed-costs and ICANN fees from those free offerings. Everything is in play. We may partner with a larger strategic – with another media co – but we have the cash and ongoing cash-flow from other operations to go it alone. I think we’re the only applicant other than the big extremely wealthy publicly traded ones with that luxury."

If that is true then Frank is giving the average domainer a good shot to get some good domains. Of course a lot can change from now til then and auctions may be needed to bring some initial money in. It is nice that Frank is at least trying to even the playing field for the average new tld investor.