The .com dominance in the virtual world is being challenged by a new set of whacky and interesting extensions that has flooded the market in the last few months.
Hundreds of gTLDs (generic top level domains), some specific to geographies, brands, professions and others are being lapped up by a number of companies and domain investors. Some of these gTLDs include .media, .xyz, .food and .cab. At the World Domain Day 2014, organised by Indian Domain Owners Association in the city on Sunday, Internet experts debated over this latest phenomenon.
Addressing the participants through videoconferencing, Mark Mann, one of the world’s leading domain investors felt that investing on new extensions like .shop, .clothing etc was a very risky proposition. “It would be too risky to involve in the gTLDs when there are millions of premium .com domain names for sale,” he said, “Instead of investing in the new one, the same amount can be invested in the .com domain names. One has to negotiate the price and purchase the domain with known English words. Then turn it in to a brand that has value, traffic and customers. This way the risk is reduced.” He felt that .com site were more favourable since the frequent algorithm changes by search engine websites may not get the required traffic for the new gTLDs.
However, there were some who differed with his point of view. Jeffrey Sass, CMO, .CLUB domains, said that the new extensions were in fact expansion of opportunities. Citing his own venture, he informed that his .Club extension had sold one lakh domains since its launch in May this year. “These extensions have a huge inventory of keywords and a good opportunity for brands to find targeted buyers. Big brands which already have .com website can have deep links shortcuts with the new extensions since they will have choice of picking domain names of their choice.” The speakers also mentioned that a number of fortune 500 companies had also invested in premium domain names.
Anand Vora, Director, Sales and Marketing, Donuts.Co felt that this was a great time for Indians to invest on domains. “We lost out on investing on .com websites because technology was still new and also due lack of education. Now, it is like a second chance for the Indians to invest on the domains.” A well-known domain investor from Hyderabad, Arvind Reddy, who holds a portfolio of 4,500 names felt that it was not easy for the Internet users to adapt to the new extensions since .com has been around for quite some time.
