events It's bad. No worse. It's sad.

[betthelot]

OK imagine you run a domain business and you sell $7.9 million dollars a year worth of domains but it costs you $18 million dollars to operate the business.
What would you do?
Well MMX owners of such names as .work .beer .london .boston decided to pay the CEO $1.1 million and stop outbound sales.
Did you hear that guys, the main stream bloggers will not pick that up THEY STOPPED OUTBOUND SALES OF PREMIUM NAMES.
They had 13 sales people whose only job was selling premium names in 2015 and it didn't work. These sales people could negotiate the price given they own them and had millions to choose from, a big advantage but it was not financially viable; endusers were not interested.
So a $10million operating loss. They are one of the biggest pure play new gTLDs company and they are hurting like many of them. Will be sold for cents on the dollar within 2 years. Their only hope is .vip launches next month in China.
Invested? Strong sell.
Announced today by the CFO reporting 2015 audited accounts to the London Stock Exchange

 

[Recons.Com]

You are missing one point though. For one exposure to scammer on dot com your average consumer sees 100 reliable ones.

For one xyz and other new gtld scammer, most of them see zero non-scammers. And soon they recognize that as one of the signs of something to avoid.

 

[brandnow]

Yes, you judge based upon illogical perceptions.

Martin Shkreli - did he run his scams from .xyz?

No, all sites related to his company were .com sites.

And he was someone people trusted due to his status.

If I wanted to con people, you bet I want to do it from a .com. The vast majority of Internet scams are done from a .com because people like you judge by appearances.

That's a pretty good point.

 

[Kate]

Yes, you judge based upon illogical perceptions.

Martin Shkreli - did he run his scams from .xyz?

No, all sites related to his company were .com sites.

No, I judge from experience.
My personal interaction with .xyz, .top, .pw has always been negative (spam).

Result: in my eyes .com are legit by default, until proven otherwise.
.xyz are dubious by default, until proven legit.
Subjective yes, but that's how people function. Perception is important, and in the present case perception is reinforced by reality.

That doesn't mean I would not visit a .xyz site. I would. But that doesn't mean I want to buy one. For my business, I prefer to use the extension of Fortune 500 companies, rather than an extension that is overridden by spammers and scammers.
It's not by chance that the ratio of bad sites is significantly higher in certain extensions.
Now figure out why. It's not my problem anyway.

 

[betthelot]

Perception is important

Hear hear

 

[Alice Wonder Miscreations]

No, I judge from experience.
My personal interaction with .xyz, .top, .pw has always been negative (spam).

Result: in my eyes .com are legit by default, until proven otherwise.
.xyz are dubious by default, until proven legit.
Subjective yes, but that's how people function. Perception is important, and in the present case perception is reinforced by reality.

That doesn't mean I would not visit a .xyz site. I would. But that doesn't mean I want to buy one. For my business, I prefer to use the extension of Fortune 500 companies, rather than an extension that is overridden by spammers and scammers.
It's not by chance that the ratio of bad sites is significantly higher in certain extensions.
Now figure out why. It's not my problem anyway.

Experience is biased.

I was beaten and mugged three times growing up, all three times it was by a specific ethnicity. Is that a reason to distrust that ethnicity?

Clearly it is not.

Do what works for you, I just am giving my perspective as to why I welcome the new gTLDs.

I welcome them because as a consumer of domain names they give me options and I like options, options is how fair market competition works.

If I had a boatload of someone else's money to blow on what I do, maybe I would only be interested in dot.com domains. But something I learned a long time ago, you use someone else's money to build your business and effectively you are their b*tch.

Using my own money for my projects, I don't like the prices domainers want for domains I want to use. The new gTLDs give me options that I like that are much more affordable.

Established businesses can blow the money, but most new businesses on the Internet fail, and when they fail, the cause isn't the domain name. Money needs to be spent where it matters.

That's my perspective.

 

[betthelot]

Experience is biased.

I was beaten and mugged three times growing up, all three times it was by a specific ethnicity. Is that a reason to distrust that ethnicity?

Yes you would be very wary, if you was taken cash from a cash point and the same big .......ethnicity came up behind you.
To say you wouldn't defies all human instincts. But of course it is politically correct.

 

[garptrader]

Clearly there are developers (many contracted by businesses to develop a website for them) who do not place much value on the domain name they use. Consequently they refuse to pay more than $50 for a domain name which meant before new TLDs were launched they would quite often be stuck using hyphens, abbreviations, numbers, etc to come up with something for reg fee. New TLDs provide more choices for such low-budget buyers. However, if they weren't willing to pay a premium for a .COM, what makes you think they will pay a premium for a .XYZ?

One thing I noticed at a gym I used to work out at in Miami (before work) - one might think that personal trainers would have many clients who are out of shape, overweight and really in need of coaching to live healthier lifestyles. What I noticed was that most of the trainers' clients were women who were already in great shape and one could argue "Why do they need a personal trainer?".

Those who value fitness are far more likely to pay for services related to their health. Those who do not place much value on fitness (even though a doctor might advise them to change their diet or get more exercise due to high blood pressure, risk of diabetes, etc) are less likely to pay for such services. Those who place no value on domain names are not going to pay a premium for a domain and will migrate to any reg fee option available. Trying to sell inferior-quality domains at premium prices to such individuals is generally not going to work out well (why outbound marketing has such a low conversion rate).

 

[Alice Wonder Miscreations]

Yes you would be very wary, if you was taken cash from a cash point and the same big .......ethnicity came up behind you.
To say you wouldn't defies all human instincts. But of course it is politically correct.

No it doesn't defy human instincts, because I know it was people who did those crimes and not the ethnicity and I know that people of every ethnicity can and do commit those crimes and people of every ethnicity can be and are law abiding citizens.

Just like the TLD has nothing to do with whether or not the person running the website is honest.

Only petty criminals do things to draw attention to themselves. The real criminals attempt to blend in, and use .com.

 

[Silentptnr]

Try selling a .com domain then try getting it back for the same price. Buyers think prices are too high until they own it. Then the value goes way up. Its not easy parting with good domains.

 

[Silentptnr]

Even regular users won't sell their one or two domains for cheap. Try emailing or calling Maw and Paw and see if they will sell cheap. They won't. Pretty much anyone who owns valuable domains knows. Not just domainers

.

 

[Alice Wonder Miscreations]

Try selling a .com domain then try getting it back for the same price. Buyers think prices are too high until they own it. Then the value goes way up. Its not easy parting with good domains.

I don't try selling them. When I no longer have use for a domain I let it expire.

Yes you should have the right to sell and for whatever price you want. I'm cool with that, especially since the new gTLDs give me options when your prices are not what I want to pay.

See? We both win. You can charge high prices for the domains you own and I and others like me can buy domains on the new gTLDs instead.

 

[Kate]

Experience is biased.

Everyone is biased to some degree, but that doesn't explain why new extensions are not more popular. Why don't we see more prominent end users buying them for large-scale projects ? Why is the spam and the abuse more visible than the bona fide developed websites ? Why are new extensions not advertised more often ? Maybe there are obvious or not so obvious reasons ?
I certainly don't think we need hundreds or thousands of generic extensions. Excessive supply vs contained demand = market crash. Economics 101.

I welcome them because as a consumer of domain names they give me options and I like options, options is how fair market competition works.
...
I don't like the prices domainers want for domains I want to use. The new gTLDs give me options that I like that are much more affordable.

That's the whole point of new extensions, that we tend to forget: provide more options to consumers. But they have been left out of the equation it seems, it's all about the profits icann and the registries stand to make by hoarding inventory.
I am for sound competition, what I don't like is the anarchistic landscape that icann created. The root is now littered with non-viable, joke extensions like .blackfriday, .hiv and what else. Many extensions are going to crash and will ultimately be retired. The chaos is not going to benefit consumers. The confusion around premium pricing is also producing bitter surprises and that also doesn't benefit people. We then have the TLD .sucks, whose business model seems to be plain extortion. I don't want to be associated with this kind of stuff.
If you think icann are going to police the registries think again. In fact, they created the mess to justify their existence. Sounds very much like government: identify/create a problem, amplify it, then pretend to regulate it.

I repeat, the way new extensions have been deployed is downright criminal and should be investigated. I am surprised the FTC isn't on it.

To sum up, new extensions already have a bad reputation and are the laughing stock of the Internet. Of course, some extensions are more problematic than others. But I don't want to associate my projects with extensions that suffer from a lack of credibility.

 

[Alice Wonder Miscreations]

Everyone is biased to some degree, but that doesn't explain why new extensions are not more popular. Why don't we see more prominent end users buying them for large-scale projects ?

.com has momentum. That's been explained. Momentum can and does change.

Remember Atari? Blackberry? AOL?

 

[Kate]

Of course, but new extensions are not new technology. They work exactly the same as other extensions. There is no technology shift at all here. They are not superior products. But they are often more expensive and less trusted. Hmm what am I going to use for my next project - tough call isn't it.

 

[Silentptnr]

My concern is that while new gTLDs do create more options, in many cases they create an envoronment of more udrp cases and tm abuse. Now businesses that aim to protect their brand have hundreds of extensions to register in that effort. These ngTLDs give bad guys more opportunity. Very chaotic.. Makes consumers trust and look for .com even more.. Makes consumers more wary of the imposters.

 

[Silentptnr]

And with premium pricing on new extensions its downright ridiculous.. Who wants to pay premium prices for unknown, untrusted extensions. Lets face facts. .com domains are most trusted and most highly regarded.

 

[Bram C.]

But the vast majority of spam still has a .com or .net address - .ru is also fairly popular though seems to have decreased recently.

.Com currently has 127 million registrations.
.xyz currently has 2.8 million registrations (2.2% of the amount of .com registrations)

Yet when I check my inbox I get more or less the same amount of spam from .xyz as from .com extensions.
Go figure.

 

[namerav]

I think .COM will rule for atleast upto 2030 and some nGTLDs will also survive and steady. For better nGTLDs should stop competing with .COM but rather choose .NET/.ORG as competition.

 

[Rainmaker-NL]

Is .xyz free for US and Canadian citizens?

 

[namerav]

Is .xyz free for US and Canadian citizens?

Why free

 

[Kate]

Not free but very cheap (< $2). It's one reason why .xyz is popular among spammers. Same problem with .top or .pw, for the same reason.
Cheap pricing is a short-term solution to boost registration volume. Downside: more abuse = bad reputation. A tainted reputation is hard to win back. .biz is still considered a snake oil extension after 15 years. TBH I hardly see any .biz these days, so I can't complain about .biz over spam. On the other hand, I am unhappy about the spam from .xyz domains.

When somebody is looking for the cheapest extension, it's seldom because a high-quality project in the works.

 

[Alice Wonder Miscreations]

Not free but very cheap (< $2). It's one reason why .xyz is popular among spammers.

And .com is cheaper than most of the new gTLDs.

Quite a bit of spam just forges the from address anyway, and looks for open relays.

 

[bmugford]

And .com is cheaper than most of the new gTLDs.

Really? Please direct me to where you can buy limitless .COM for under $1 each like with .XYZ, .Top, and all the other extensions with inflated registrations numbers based on cheap or free regs.

Brad

 

[namerav]

Maybe he was talking about ngTLD registrations and renewals for extensions like .CAR, .CARS, etc.

 

[Alice Wonder Miscreations]

Maybe he was talking about ngTLD registrations and renewals for extensions like .CAR, .CARS, etc.

Yes, most of the ngTLDs start at about twice the .com price.

.xyz, .top etc. I don't have interest in because they are meaningless. .email, .audio, .media, etc. are more expensive from the registrars than .com. Scammers looking for a cheap domain won't use them.