Alex Kehr wrote an article on his personal blog, titled “Why .COM will probably get Netflixed by New TLDs”
The article is about the relationship of .com and new gtlds being analogous to Blockbuster and NetFlix. I think he is misguided in his interpretation. The other thing missing from the article is that Alex works for Name.com who is owned by Rightside. It helps the reader know where you are coming from and where your particular bias may lie.
From the article:
The .COM domain is starting to fail the consumer
Ludwig Von Mises, the Austrian School economist, once explained that when an entrepreneur fails to use their capital to the “best possible satisfaction of consumers” they will be “relegated to a place in which his ineptitude no longer hurts people’s well-being.”What Von Mises is saying is that businesses become successful because they fill a need that is unmet. A business becomes unsuccessful when they have failed the consumer. The .COM domain is starting to fail the consumer because of lack of availability and the high prices being demanded by domain investors who are buying up both good and not-so-good .COM domain names.
.Com is not failing the consumer, when I go to Google.com I get what I am expecting, same goes for Amazon.com and 117 million other names. This is the problem I have with new gtld marketing. Come up with ideas to why a business should use a domain to express a certain message or use as a satellite website to accentuate one part of the corporate message. If new gtld proponents continue to tear down .com to make themselves look better it is not going to work imo. Because guess what everything new becomes old, so in a couple years .Ninja is not a new gtld it is just a tld. By then maybe .Samurai will say .Ninja has failed the consumer.
The article is ended by the following thoughts:
What might happens when New TLDs really start to take off?
Blockbuster was forced to copy the Netflix model with mail-order service, but it never worked out– Blockbuster was too late. When New TLDs really start to take off, VeriSign might be forced to purchase competitors to .COM. They would probably need to purchase competitors because New TLDs are creatively destructing the .COM domain. The .COM business is sort of facing an unknown at the moment because it’s being out-innovated.The future for New TLDs is definitely one that should be looked at extremely optimistically. There’s really no reason why New TLDs should flop because they are filling the unmet need of good domain name availability and affordability.
Unmet need ? Who had the unmet need ? Innovation ? Just stop there is nothing innovative, all domain owners and registry owners should worry about real innovation that would make a domain name unnecessary. It is just another naming option it is not innovation. The day when using .ninja over .net becomes the definition of innovation, well then remove that word from the dictionary.
Read the full article on AlexKehr.com
But here is one of the top 3 greatest new gtld lies ever told, availability and affordability.
Rightside won’t even quote me a price on certain names. Other registries want big dollars for prime keywords. Because see the unmet need was not for three word domain names, they are available in .com. People wanted valuable names that were regged decades ago for $10, that was the real desire
I know a little something about Football, I think it rocks, but I cannot get Football.rocks at an affordable price, I need to fill out a form
Submit an offer – football.rocks
This premium name may be available for purchase. Please submit an offer below and you will be contacted by a sales representative shortly.
That doesn’t sound like it is going to be affordable. A lot of people may be interested in a topic like oh I don’t know, SEX. some may even think of themselves as a Sex Ninja, well that is not going to be affordable, another platinum name when I search Name.com, along with Sex.moda, Sex.Rocks, Sex.consulting, Sex.pub.
I support anyone trying to make the most out of their vision, I just don’t think you have to keep trying to put down another entity, especially when some of the putdowns don’t look to be reality in the present time.
Full disclosure: No one at TheDomains is anti – new gtld. I own 8 new gtld names and Mike owns several names. Let’s see the message be more proactive and based on real data and not tearing down others.
