6 ms·

Why .com will probably get Netflixed by New TLDs

35 points by alexkehr 12y ago

happytrails 12y ago
Really though? .com is ubiquitous in culture so I doubt any of this will come to fruition.
- spiritplumber 12y ago
  Domain names are mattering somewhat less lately - it just has to show up high on google/bing, and be short and recognizable. I still like mine though.
  - 0x0 12y ago
    As long as they are used in email adresses, they're still pretty significant.
- rhizome 12y ago
  There should be a corollary to Betteridge's Law of Headlines that applies to ones that purport to predict the future.
- alexkehr 12y ago
  That's also really a U.S. thing. In other countries, national TLDs are king. Ex: Germany w/ .DE or UK with .co.uk.
- Yelwis 12y ago
  Even where it isn't ubiquitous (outside the US), unusual domains confuse plenty of non-technical users. I own <surname>.me.uk, and it took years for relatives and others to stop querying me if I gave them my email address. "You mean, .me.uk.com?" ".me.co.uk?" "That's <name>@me.uk?". Having said that, I've seen .travel and .jobs on big advertisements, so it's just a matter of time.
jandrewrogers 12y ago
The big change since the original days of the dotcom boom is that most people no longer find websites for the first time by typing "http://www.$FOO.com" http://www.$FOO.com" in the address bar of their browser. It is an increasingly marginal means by which valuable new traffic is driven to domains. It goes beyond just web search; a large percentage of people "find" sites by clicking on links they see in their social media or their browsers automagically remembering the actual domain for them based on a few letters of the associated brand name. The app-ification of the Internet is also devaluing domain names as a branding vehicle. This is analogous to why no one remembers phone numbers (or email addresses) anymore. Our phones and computers abstract that away for us so that we only need to know who we want to call. This has a lot of economy in every day usage.
- Goladus 12y ago
  I agree except that domain names are still words, not numbers, so they're more memorable in the instances where they are visible.
  - alexkehr 12y ago
    It's also interesting to note that Google is making a large investment in New TLDs: http://www.google.com/registry/ http://www.google.com/registry/ -- In addition to owning a lot TLDs, they just paid $25 million for the rights to .app.
- doctorpangloss 12y ago
  > The big change since the original days of the dotcom boom is that most people no longer find websites for the first time by typing "http://www.$FOO.com" http://www.$FOO.com" in the address bar of their browser. You would be utterly shocked to learn that direct navigation advertising, domain rotation and other related businesses are thriving, with multi-hundred million dollar revenues. It's not about "most" people, it's just, "financially viable people."
  - PaulHoule 12y ago
    What I see is that direct navigation is slowly going the way of the boiled frog. As for people on the bottom of the economic totem pole, many of them breathe their internet through a straw on some mobile "framily" plan and are often incredulous that there's this thing called WiFi you can use with a tablet. Thus they are getting forced to use modern browsers and the same thing will happen when a virus finally melts down their Windows XP machine for the last time. I think it's more material the effect that this has on "seomaining". For a long time it was really good to have $FOO.something if you want to rank for $FOO. This would not give you good SEO by itself, but if you do everything else right, it's a big help. With so many domains out there, this signal will be weakened.
chjohasbrouck 12y ago
The problem with this whole argument is that the person purchasing the domain isn't the consumer. The end user is the consumer, and the .COM TLD isn't failing them in any perceptible way whatsoever. The higher prices actually serve their needs, because they lend greater credibility to the .COMs. The consumer can trust them more, the consumer can expect greater investment in the product they serve, and the consumer can easily recognize and remember the domain name.
- alexkehr 12y ago
  There is something insanely useful about New TLDs though that also lends credibility to a site. For example, I have the domain alex.social as sort of a social hub for myself. I believe that that makes my site almost more credible than my blog domain, alexkehr.com. A domain that firmly says who you are and what you do seems like it should/does have a lot of value.
  - logicallee 12y ago
    yes; but if you had your blog under alex.com nobody who ever learned this about you would ever, ever forget. it would put you in a whole different league. I dare say it would get you laid at parties. even zuckerberg doesn't have mark.com
  - morgante 12y ago
    If you tell the average consumer your site is at "alex.social" they will type in alex.social.com.
    - icebraining 12y ago
      It's funny, but our main site now uses a .solutions domain, and our existing users adapted pretty well, even those who have trouble with basic computer tasks.
  - chimeracoder 12y ago
    That works for the mil and edu domains, because there is a verification process creating a barrier to entry, and therefore some measure of validity. There are so many new TLDs out there that I couldn't even pick out the real ones from fake ones if you gave me a list. And most of them require no verification whatsoever, so They're completely open to legitimate users and spammers alike.
Zaephyr 12y ago
I think it is hard to say how this will play out. Maybe the author is right and people will care less about their domain name, or it could be become one of several presence items that companies use to reach customers. For instance, the US toll-free numbers continue to increase (now 6 exchanges) despite the decline of metered toll service and payphones.
hatsix 12y ago
In what way is .com expensive compared to the new tlds? It isn't verisign, it's the squatters who are demanding outrageous prices... Unless the new TLDs have specific content requirements, (like .sucks has... though their pricing is the topic for a separate thread) The squatters have already moved on to the new tlds. I recently looked up my first name, and while every tld I could find is registered, there isn't content up on any of them, it's all "this domain is for sale". I contacted one to see what price they're asking... negotiated them down to $3000. They're playing the long game. And this is the 'innovation'?
- r721 12y ago
  >like .sucks has... though their pricing is the topic for a separate thread That thread was front-paged yesterday: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9357898 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9357898
- seanp2k2 12y ago
  Re: squatters...how many websites do you (reader) use when looking for X where X is even in the domain? For hosting, I use digitalocean, not hosting.com. For shopping, I use Amazon or overstock or some named store, not name-of-thing.com When I'm searching for reviews of something and get results for "exact-thing-I-searched-reviews.com" or "best-name-of-thing.com", I immediately know those are spam and not worth visiting, since no business / forum / self-respecting personal site would call themselves something so ridiculously specific. TL;DR generic name domains are useless since no established reputable companies use them. Look at the top Alexa 500 and consider how many related to X even have X in the domain name.
jonawesomegreen 12y ago
Has anyone found that the registrars for the new TLDs seem very shady? I was trying to register a domain with a new TLD and I could not find a single registrar for this particular TLD that I trusted with my credit card. Some of them had barely working websites with broken links and bad info.
- noblethrasher 12y ago
  Hover has a ton of TLDs.
  - seanp2k2 12y ago
    So does name.com, iwantmyname, namecheap, etc. Just visit your favorite registrar in most cases.
jayzalowitz 12y ago
I bought c.how recently... there are now 4 letter domains that make words that you can just register. shit is awesome.
smutticus 12y ago
There are all kinds of predictions flying around on how the introduction of new gTLDs is going to effect the economics of older TLDs. No one knows what's going to happen.
ohazi 12y ago
There might be some points here about the economics of namesquatting, but it's a mistake to talk about any sort of "disruptive innovation" happening here. There's nothing innovative about the new TLDs... they're just names. The biggest problem I see with the new gTLDs is the fact that I know very little about the the companies that own them. Did they set up shop to try and sell flashy new names to suckers who don't know any better, or are they trying to build a long-term, sustainable domain business? Should I be wary of the ones that charge more, or the ones that charge less (balancing opportunistic price gouging vs making sure the business earns enough to continue to operate long-term)? Until I have good answers to these questions, I'm avoiding gTLDs. Public acceptance of gTLDs will come eventually if it needs to, but the dearth of sleazy, extortionate gTLD companies suggests to me that ICANN has not set these up to succeed.
tres 12y ago
I can't see the Blockbuster analogy fully working here. It seems that a big reason why the old video rental model died was simply convenience. .com is the more convenient choice due to inertia. It seems to me that a better analogy is that the new TLDs seem more like suburbs to a city. .com still lies at the city core, but the suburbs provide for a new type of Internet resident -- those who are willing to trade convenience and location for price and value. Like Detroit, or the rust-belt in the 80's it's possible that the core becomes rotten, but it seems in those cases, the nexus still remains, but becomes depreciated. It will be interesting to see how domain real-estate follows the patterns exhibited in real-estate as the new TLDs become more ubiquitous; will there eventually be a revival of .com similar to the urban revivals we've seen? Or maybe that's just stretching the analogy a bit too far :)
return0 12y ago
the only good about the arbitrary tlds is that icann has now run out of shitty ideas
beberlei 12y ago
Happened to us. Found a great name for our bootstrapped product. The .com-domain was already snatched from a re-seller. They wanted 28.000 USD for it. So we went with .io like so many other tech products before.
- seanp2k2 12y ago
  IMO .io is a little different, since it has quite a bit of momentum now and broadly speaking, stuff at .io domains is for the tech-savvy who are likely aware that there are things aside from .com out there. If a layperson heard "visit us on the web at foo.io !" On the radio / TV, I think many would either search "foo.io" or "foo", or try foo.io.com , then get frustrated that it wasn't what they expected.
stonogo 12y ago
Is the author trying to make "netflix" a verb with the same meaning as "obviate"?
Zalos 12y ago
It´s password protected, why is that? anybody got the password? I would like to read the article.
- seba_dos1 12y ago
  https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache%3Ahttp%3A%2F%2Fwww.alexkehr.com%2F2015%2F04%2Fwhy-com-will-probably-get-netflixed-by-new-tlds%2F&oq=cache%3Ahttp%3A%2F%2Fwww.alexkehr.com%2F2015%2F04%2Fwhy-com-will-probably-get-netflixed-by-new-tlds%2F&ie=UTF-8&aqs=chrome..69i57j69i58.2089j0j7&sourceid=chrome-instant&ion=1&es_th=1&bav=on.2,or.r_cp.&bvm=bv.90491159,d.bGg&biw=1920&bih=995&dpr=1&ech=1&psi=nZsrVcunMomMsAGH3IGwDA.1428921246963.3&ei=nZsrVcunMomMsAGH3IGwDA&emsg=NCSR&noj=1 https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache%3Ahttp...
  - Zalos 12y ago
    Thank you :)

35 points by alexkehr 12y ago

happytrails 12y ago

Really though? .com is ubiquitous in culture so I doubt any of this will come to fruition.

spiritplumber 12y ago
Domain names are mattering somewhat less lately - it just has to show up high on google/bing, and be short and recognizable. I still like mine though.
- 0x0 12y ago
  As long as they are used in email adresses, they're still pretty significant.
rhizome 12y ago
There should be a corollary to Betteridge's Law of Headlines that applies to ones that purport to predict the future.
alexkehr 12y ago
That's also really a U.S. thing. In other countries, national TLDs are king. Ex: Germany w/ .DE or UK with .co.uk.
Yelwis 12y ago
Even where it isn't ubiquitous (outside the US), unusual domains confuse plenty of non-technical users. I own <surname>.me.uk, and it took years for relatives and others to stop querying me if I gave them my email address. "You mean, .me.uk.com?" ".me.co.uk?" "That's <name>@me.uk?". Having said that, I've seen .travel and .jobs on big advertisements, so it's just a matter of time.

jandrewrogers 12y ago

The big change since the original days of the dotcom boom is that most people no longer find websites for the first time by typing "http://www.$FOO.com" http://www.$FOO.com" in the address bar of their browser. It is an increasingly marginal means by which valuable new traffic is driven to domains. It goes beyond just web search; a large percentage of people "find" sites by clicking on links they see in their social media or their browsers automagically remembering the actual domain for them based on a few letters of the associated brand name. The app-ification of the Internet is also devaluing domain names as a branding vehicle. This is analogous to why no one remembers phone numbers (or email addresses) anymore. Our phones and computers abstract that away for us so that we only need to know who we want to call. This has a lot of economy in every day usage.

Goladus 12y ago
I agree except that domain names are still words, not numbers, so they're more memorable in the instances where they are visible.
- alexkehr 12y ago
  It's also interesting to note that Google is making a large investment in New TLDs: http://www.google.com/registry/ http://www.google.com/registry/ -- In addition to owning a lot TLDs, they just paid $25 million for the rights to .app.
doctorpangloss 12y ago
> The big change since the original days of the dotcom boom is that most people no longer find websites for the first time by typing "http://www.$FOO.com" http://www.$FOO.com" in the address bar of their browser. You would be utterly shocked to learn that direct navigation advertising, domain rotation and other related businesses are thriving, with multi-hundred million dollar revenues. It's not about "most" people, it's just, "financially viable people."
- PaulHoule 12y ago
  What I see is that direct navigation is slowly going the way of the boiled frog. As for people on the bottom of the economic totem pole, many of them breathe their internet through a straw on some mobile "framily" plan and are often incredulous that there's this thing called WiFi you can use with a tablet. Thus they are getting forced to use modern browsers and the same thing will happen when a virus finally melts down their Windows XP machine for the last time. I think it's more material the effect that this has on "seomaining". For a long time it was really good to have $FOO.something if you want to rank for $FOO. This would not give you good SEO by itself, but if you do everything else right, it's a big help. With so many domains out there, this signal will be weakened.

chjohasbrouck 12y ago

The problem with this whole argument is that the person purchasing the domain isn't the consumer. The end user is the consumer, and the .COM TLD isn't failing them in any perceptible way whatsoever. The higher prices actually serve their needs, because they lend greater credibility to the .COMs. The consumer can trust them more, the consumer can expect greater investment in the product they serve, and the consumer can easily recognize and remember the domain name.

alexkehr 12y ago
There is something insanely useful about New TLDs though that also lends credibility to a site. For example, I have the domain alex.social as sort of a social hub for myself. I believe that that makes my site almost more credible than my blog domain, alexkehr.com. A domain that firmly says who you are and what you do seems like it should/does have a lot of value.
- logicallee 12y ago
  yes; but if you had your blog under alex.com nobody who ever learned this about you would ever, ever forget. it would put you in a whole different league. I dare say it would get you laid at parties. even zuckerberg doesn't have mark.com
- morgante 12y ago
  If you tell the average consumer your site is at "alex.social" they will type in alex.social.com.
  - icebraining 12y ago
    It's funny, but our main site now uses a .solutions domain, and our existing users adapted pretty well, even those who have trouble with basic computer tasks.
- chimeracoder 12y ago
  That works for the mil and edu domains, because there is a verification process creating a barrier to entry, and therefore some measure of validity. There are so many new TLDs out there that I couldn't even pick out the real ones from fake ones if you gave me a list. And most of them require no verification whatsoever, so They're completely open to legitimate users and spammers alike.

Zaephyr 12y ago

I think it is hard to say how this will play out. Maybe the author is right and people will care less about their domain name, or it could be become one of several presence items that companies use to reach customers. For instance, the US toll-free numbers continue to increase (now 6 exchanges) despite the decline of metered toll service and payphones.

hatsix 12y ago

In what way is .com expensive compared to the new tlds? It isn't verisign, it's the squatters who are demanding outrageous prices... Unless the new TLDs have specific content requirements, (like .sucks has... though their pricing is the topic for a separate thread) The squatters have already moved on to the new tlds. I recently looked up my first name, and while every tld I could find is registered, there isn't content up on any of them, it's all "this domain is for sale". I contacted one to see what price they're asking... negotiated them down to $3000. They're playing the long game. And this is the 'innovation'?

r721 12y ago
>like .sucks has... though their pricing is the topic for a separate thread That thread was front-paged yesterday: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9357898 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9357898
seanp2k2 12y ago
Re: squatters...how many websites do you (reader) use when looking for X where X is even in the domain? For hosting, I use digitalocean, not hosting.com. For shopping, I use Amazon or overstock or some named store, not name-of-thing.com When I'm searching for reviews of something and get results for "exact-thing-I-searched-reviews.com" or "best-name-of-thing.com", I immediately know those are spam and not worth visiting, since no business / forum / self-respecting personal site would call themselves something so ridiculously specific. TL;DR generic name domains are useless since no established reputable companies use them. Look at the top Alexa 500 and consider how many related to X even have X in the domain name.

jonawesomegreen 12y ago

Has anyone found that the registrars for the new TLDs seem very shady? I was trying to register a domain with a new TLD and I could not find a single registrar for this particular TLD that I trusted with my credit card. Some of them had barely working websites with broken links and bad info.

noblethrasher 12y ago
Hover has a ton of TLDs.
- seanp2k2 12y ago
  So does name.com, iwantmyname, namecheap, etc. Just visit your favorite registrar in most cases.

jayzalowitz 12y ago

I bought c.how recently... there are now 4 letter domains that make words that you can just register. shit is awesome.

smutticus 12y ago

There are all kinds of predictions flying around on how the introduction of new gTLDs is going to effect the economics of older TLDs. No one knows what's going to happen.

ohazi 12y ago

There might be some points here about the economics of namesquatting, but it's a mistake to talk about any sort of "disruptive innovation" happening here. There's nothing innovative about the new TLDs... they're just names. The biggest problem I see with the new gTLDs is the fact that I know very little about the the companies that own them. Did they set up shop to try and sell flashy new names to suckers who don't know any better, or are they trying to build a long-term, sustainable domain business? Should I be wary of the ones that charge more, or the ones that charge less (balancing opportunistic price gouging vs making sure the business earns enough to continue to operate long-term)? Until I have good answers to these questions, I'm avoiding gTLDs. Public acceptance of gTLDs will come eventually if it needs to, but the dearth of sleazy, extortionate gTLD companies suggests to me that ICANN has not set these up to succeed.

tres 12y ago

I can't see the Blockbuster analogy fully working here. It seems that a big reason why the old video rental model died was simply convenience. .com is the more convenient choice due to inertia. It seems to me that a better analogy is that the new TLDs seem more like suburbs to a city. .com still lies at the city core, but the suburbs provide for a new type of Internet resident -- those who are willing to trade convenience and location for price and value. Like Detroit, or the rust-belt in the 80's it's possible that the core becomes rotten, but it seems in those cases, the nexus still remains, but becomes depreciated. It will be interesting to see how domain real-estate follows the patterns exhibited in real-estate as the new TLDs become more ubiquitous; will there eventually be a revival of .com similar to the urban revivals we've seen? Or maybe that's just stretching the analogy a bit too far :)

return0 12y ago

the only good about the arbitrary tlds is that icann has now run out of shitty ideas

beberlei 12y ago

Happened to us. Found a great name for our bootstrapped product. The .com-domain was already snatched from a re-seller. They wanted 28.000 USD for it. So we went with .io like so many other tech products before.

seanp2k2 12y ago
IMO .io is a little different, since it has quite a bit of momentum now and broadly speaking, stuff at .io domains is for the tech-savvy who are likely aware that there are things aside from .com out there. If a layperson heard "visit us on the web at foo.io !" On the radio / TV, I think many would either search "foo.io" or "foo", or try foo.io.com , then get frustrated that it wasn't what they expected.

stonogo 12y ago

Is the author trying to make "netflix" a verb with the same meaning as "obviate"?

Zalos 12y ago

It´s password protected, why is that? anybody got the password? I would like to read the article.

seba_dos1 12y ago
https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache%3Ahttp%3A%2F%2Fwww.alexkehr.com%2F2015%2F04%2Fwhy-com-will-probably-get-netflixed-by-new-tlds%2F&oq=cache%3Ahttp%3A%2F%2Fwww.alexkehr.com%2F2015%2F04%2Fwhy-com-will-probably-get-netflixed-by-new-tlds%2F&ie=UTF-8&aqs=chrome..69i57j69i58.2089j0j7&sourceid=chrome-instant&ion=1&es_th=1&bav=on.2,or.r_cp.&bvm=bv.90491159,d.bGg&biw=1920&bih=995&dpr=1&ech=1&psi=nZsrVcunMomMsAGH3IGwDA.1428921246963.3&ei=nZsrVcunMomMsAGH3IGwDA&emsg=NCSR&noj=1 https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache%3Ahttp...
- Zalos 12y ago
  Thank you :)