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Summing up
the business community's objections to having a
truckload of unwanted new gTLDs dumped in their laps,
Boutin wrote, "If ICANN's plan goes into action,
it'll allow what will seem like an infinite number of
possible URLs. Competitors and opponents can potentially
register them, to steal traffic away from authentic
sites. Business owners told USA Today that they
fear another round of spending to lock out domain
claim-jumpers."
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Boutin added,
"Mainstream Internet users will probably
see the new custom domains as too complicated,
like 9-digit ZIP codes. The ad hoc
standard of cramming a series of words into a
.com domain such as thestandard.com, seems to
work fine for just about everyone. Most Internet
users have figured out that Googling the name of
a company, person or organization usually finds
the correct site, so there's no need to memorize
a long URL in the first place."
I have been a
supporter of some of the previous new TLDs and I
believe there is room for a few more carefully
chosen ones with sound backers that would
fill a real need (Boutin likes .eco or an
alternative, .green - which I think is
the better of the two). However I see |
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no logic in burying
potential diamonds under an infinite
wasteland of cubic zirconium that no one
will ever use - but that many businesses will
still have to pay for, like it or not. |
Elsewhere
we have some conference and auction updates to pass
along today. Moniker
has released a list of some of the most likely domains
to be added to their April 29 live auction at T.R.A.F.F.I.C.
Silicon Valley. The potential roster
includes Ad.com, Realty.com and SantaClara.com
(the city that will host the conference) to name just a
few. They plan to release the final auction catalog April
14.
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RickLatona.com
will also be running a live auction at
T.R.A.F.F.I.C. Silicon Valley with their sale
slated for April 28th. They just announced
that anyone willing to submit good generic
direct navigation domain names to that auction
with a reserve price of no more than 6X annual earnings
will have their sales commission reduced from
15% to 10%. Names have to be submitted by Saturday
(April 11) to qualify.
Meanwhile the
company's online adult auction (that was tied to
the recent Phoenix Forum) is still
underway with the final hammer scheduled to drop
at 2pm (US Eastern time) on Sunday
(April 12). That sale features some exceptional
generic domains including XXX.com, WebCam.com
and Novelties.com. The entire list of names can be viewed at www.proxibid.com/ricklatona. |
Rick
Latona |
In an
especially welcome bit of news from Latona (because it
involves his health) I was happy to read on his blog
that he is kicking a 20-year smoking habit. Latona said
it has been three weeks since he last lit up. He even
announced plans to launch a new site to help others give
up cigarettes at KickTheHabit.com
(leave it to him to have the perfect domain name for the
project!). It will be his first business to consumer
ecommerce site in seven years and I think this one has
the potential to be a massive hit.
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Finally, DomainConsultant.com
said they will be announcing the winner of their
Domain Madness contest (that ended March
31) during the GeoDomain
Expo coming up April 23-25 in
San Diego. They sold 25 of the 48 domains
put up for sale in the Domain Madness auction
(for a total of close to $150,000) and
the contestant who came closest to predicting
which domains would sell during that event will
get a cool $1,000 for their efforts. You
can get more details on how the Domain Madness
sale and content went here.
(Posted
April
8, 2009) |
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