Why .com will probably get Netflixed by New TLDs

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" 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.

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.

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'?

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.

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 :)

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

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

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.

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.

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

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

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

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.

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.