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Jeanette
Eriksson
has been a leading figure in the new TLD
space for almost a decade now. The former Vice
President of the .GLOBAL registry, who is
now the VP of Marketing and Online Brand
Protection at Desktop.com,
is also a freelance author and consultant. Several
weeks ago Jeanette began working on a deep dive
into where new TLDs stand now, gathering
perspectives from thought leaders as well as
recommendations for online branding strategies for
today's environment. The engrossing end result was
made available to all today when Jeanette re-
published the information as a free LinkedIn
article (the piece was originally
published by World
Trademark Review and was
accessible only to their paid
subscribers). As
most of your are aware, a new
round of TLDs is in progress at ICANN,
so this
information is especially timely. In this piece,
Jeanette analyzed the
interests of five key stakeholder groups, shared
commentary she received from a wide range of
industry veterans and assembled the top takeaways
for brand owners.
At
the start, from her own experience during the
first round of new TLDs, Jeanette noted,
"Opinions live on long after the ICANN
processes are concluded. It is thus worthwhile
identifying some of the roles and underlying
mechanisms that affect how these domains are
presented to brand owners and the general public.
Understanding this helps us interpret the
information we are presented with, and can
ultimately lead to better decision making
for clients and ourselves.
I
was one of the people Jeanette asked about those
wide ranging opinions of new gTLDs that
continue to create debate nearly 10 years after
they were introduced. She published my thoughts on
that:
“On
the business side of it I think there has been too
much sniping between legacy domain advocates and
the new gTLD advocates with |
Jeanette
Eriksson
VP of Marketing & Online Brand Protection
Desktop.com |
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both
spending too much time denigrating the other -
rather than focusing on their own strengths. I
think this came from each side feeling the success
of the other would come at their expense - but
that hasn’t been the case. .com is stronger than
ever in registrations and the aftermarket. They
have also become pricier in the aftermarket which
has created opportunities for strong new gTLDs to
serve markets that need more affordable options.
The growth in demand for domains in general has
left room for everyone to succeed on their own
merits. When Verisign took over the .com
registry in 2000 only 20 million .com
domains existed. There are over 156 million
now. That hasn’t left many viable terms
available in .com that SMBs can afford. New gTLDs
provide them with options and if our concern is
the health of general economies, more options is a
good thing for everyone.”
The
above barely scratches the surface of the
extensive ground covered in Jeanette's article, so
don't miss this opportunity to read the entire
piece here. |
