There are two types of new TLD's being considered:
1. chartered, which menas one has to proove that one fits into it
(e.g. that one is a museum for .museum)
2. generic, open to all
I see no problems with 1, except that it will be expensive to run it,
because all applicatations have to be checked by humans.
As for 2 I am not sure it is possible to let them succeed in business .
The message a .biz or .web will give to a customer is always: I could not
get a ,com or .net. The advantage of having a short name, say shoes.biz,
will be limited to a few, as most of this sort of names will be collected
by entrepreneurs, I am sure. Think of special servers, think of scripting,
and you get the picture. If a lot of the good names in .biz and .web (or
whatever TLD's ICANN in its wisdom may approve) are stored in this way and
not used, like e.g. many two and three (and four) letter .com's are
already now, they will not gain acceptance with the public. It won't get
used to it, so it will not be a great boon to have and use such a name.
You can't put it on a van, a billboard, in a radio ad, because it does not
sound familiar. The only way to remedy this is a lot of very expensive
marketing. See the lack of success of the country TLD's introduced at a
generic level in the last year or two: .ms, .ws, .cc. They require a lot
of explanation to customers...
Another thing is that a lot of existing companies will register their name
in .biz and .web, just as they did in .com, .net and .org. This is of
course good for the registrars :-) Not however for the acceptance of the
new TLDs, as these names will again not ne used. No company now advertizes
their .org when they also have the .com. Neither will they advertize their
.biz.
So, I expect the new generic TLDs will not be much of a success in
business. They may be on other levels, say .nom for family homepages. But
that will be similar to the way .org is now a success. And you can still
get 4 letter .org names, plenty.
Maybe there are ways to give the new TLDs a better chance, when limits are
imposed upon the number any one person or company can register. But then ,
clever people will find a way to get around that barrier.
Another idea might be to start with receiving applications without giving
anyone straight away what he requests. Those names that more than one
person/company wants could be raffled off. A lottery I mean. There are
disadvantages here as well. Auction is also feasable and good for the
registrars. But see the problems with .tv, which auctioned names.
In some ways new generic TLDs are like printing more money. It all depends
on the trust people put in those who print it and their power to back up
the value.
--
Marc Schneiders ------- Venster - http://www.venster.nl
[EMAIL PROTECTED] - [EMAIL PROTECTED] - [EMAIL PROTECTED]
On Sat, 12 Aug 2000, Fagyal Csongor
wrote:
> Sue,
>
> I am not an expert, but I think after the introduction of the new TLDs there
> will be a big "gold-rush" for new names under the new TLDs. However, there
> are much more domains registered than used already. The guys at greatDomains
> are proud of the enormous value of all the domains they are listing -
> however, do a domain really worth thousands of bucks if you cannot sell it?
> There will be millions of new domains on the market very soon... and after a
> year everyone will notice that it is not a good business any more, because
> there is no market. However, by then, all good names will be taken... I
> think there should be a "you cannot register if you do not use it" policy.
> Of course it is hard to enforce, if not impossible, but the tendency just
> stinks. All in all, the number of .com registration will decrease
> dramatically, I am very sure about that. If we want to stay in business, we
> have to cooperate with other registars too.
>
> - Csongor
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Sue Chooi" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>; <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> Cc: "Charles Daminato" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> Sent: Saturday, August 12, 2000 1:17 PM
> Subject: New TLDs
>
>
> > Hi "all",
> >
> > I was thinking about the implementation of new TLDs for sometime now. Will
> > the business of OpenSRS resellers who are domain resellers and OpenSRS be
> > affected with the implementation of the new TLDs? Will .com, .net and .org
> > still be as "popular"? And does anyone know whether ICANN-accredited
> > registrars will be allowed to offer registration under the new TLDs under
> > their current accreditation with ICANN?
> >
> > Sue
> >
>
--
Marc Schneiders ------- Venster - http://www.venster.nl
[EMAIL PROTECTED] - [EMAIL PROTECTED] - [EMAIL PROTECTED]
