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By
Karn Jajoo
At
the time of writing this, there are more
than 1.8
billion live websites in the world. Back
in 1985, when the world’s first .com
domain was registered, there were merely six.
Such an exponential increase in just 36
years doesn’t quite come as a surprise. In
fact, it seems like an obvious progression
considering how launching a website today
goes hand in hand with starting something
new.
Fortunately,
while the World Wide Web provides infinite
space for everyone to build a website, the
same cannot be said about domain names. With
a spurt in domain registrations, the good
old .com is becoming saturated. Perhaps
nothing is more telling of this saturation
than Verisign’s
own admission, justifying
that it needs the .web TLD because it is
running out of .com domain names.
It
was to combat this overcrowding of legacy
extensions and to expand the availability of
quality domain names that new top-level
domains (nTLDs) were introduced almost a
decade ago. For me, this, too, was an
obvious progression.
Historically,
most naming conventions have gone through
similar developments. For instance, with the
increase in population, two-digit postal
codes in the United States were substituted
for five-digit
Zonal Improvement Plan (ZIP)
codes.
Phone
numbers, too, have gone through as many
iterations as the telephone itself,
going from alphanumeric to 5-7-digit numbers
to the now prominent 10-digit number.
Just
like ZIP codes and phone numbers, no two
entities can have the same domain name (they
are, afterall the “OG
NFTs” except that domains
have actual utility too);
and that’s why nTLDs make sense.
So
where are we at this point in the evolution
of domain names?
I
believe that we are going through the Early
Adopters / Visionaries phase (ref: image below) for nTLDs at this point. It hasn’t been easy
for nTLDs to be universally accepted
instantly; especially since not all nTLDs
are created the same.
At Radix, we have seen a stark difference between the
trends and user behaviour pertaining to each
of our TLDs. While .Tech has organically
seen an adoption among startups, .Store and
.Online have seen an uptake amongst online
sellers. .Site has been the nTLD of choice
for professional services and .Space has
been popular among artists, real estate
spaces,
outer-space businesses as well as
generic online pursuits.
Not all of these target groups inherently know and
understand domain names; let alone new
domain extensions. For majority people all
over the world, including in countries such
as India, a website still means .com.
On the other end of the spectrum are global
businesses such as Viacom and Emirates that
adopted nTLDs early on. More recently,
new-age startups such as Doordash (www.order.online), Aurora (www.aurora.tech),
and even Netflix (www.netflix.shop) have integrated nTLDs in their growth plans
strategically.
These are some of the many examples of visionary
early adopters that are able to see the
value in nTLDs that the rest of the world is
yet to experience.
The
skepticism towards nTLDs...and every other
“new” industry
Personally, I find skepticism towards new domain
extensions similar to that faced by the many
other industries. Whenever something
revolutionary comes along, fear and
resistance follow suit. It happened with electric
cars.
The same narrative repeats itself with
products that came long after an incumbent
has enjoyed network effects and was the de
facto choice.
For all the potential of cryptocurrency,
they also undergo similar criticism, or
misunderstanding. In fact, cryptocurrency
has more than its fair share of naysayers
which include the likes of Charlie
Munger.
It is difficult to ignore the obvious
conflict of interest when those who benefit
the most from the established order are the
first ones
to decry change.
But
then, not all cryptos are created equal,
neither are all domain extensions.
The meme-cryptos or penny TLDs will
likely not sustain in the long run and
it’s intellectually lazy to conflate all
new domain extensions using false
equivalence, especially within the domain
industry.
The
same folks who cheered as El Salvador became
the first country to pass a bill to adopt
BTC as an official currency alongside the
USD still unequivocally deny the increasing
prominence of new domain extensions. The
cognitive dissonance of believing in a
future with cryptos and not in new domain
extensions is interesting to witness.
Another parallel can be drawn with the exodus of tech
talent from Silicon Valley to the likes of
Austin and Miami.
The tech community is fed up with anti-tech
sentiment in California despite their
contributions to the local economy. In some
ways, this parallels Verisign
calling people
who buy domains to sell for higher prices
“domain scalpers”; prominent voices have
expressed dissent over increasingly
higher taxes
in California, something they find
unjustifiable. This is similar to the
efforts of communities like ICA (Internet
Commerce Association) standing up against increase
in .com prices
that they seem to have little say in.
While the incumbent sleeps at the wheel, alternatives
such as Miami and Austin are wooing
users away
and new businesses are sprouting in these
new ‘areas’ - whether in the physical
world or the Internet. Eventually widespread
adoption and usage (in case of nTLDs) will
shift the perception and normalize these
alternatives, making them obvious in
hindsight.
Not only that, the current situation of
unrest in San Francisco is a great reminder
that protecting the rights of end-users is
of key importance. SF citizens are fighting to make themselves safer from crime by petitioning to recall
the current district attorney. This is akin
to registries like us actively protecting
our end-customers by minimising the domain
abuse within our TLDs. If we don’t make
our namespace safe, it will affect those who
have chosen to reside on them virtually.
Letting our guard down is not an option.
Startups are often early adopters and one interesting
data point is the share of YC Demo Day startups
that are on a .com has gone down by 15% over
the course of just a couple of years.
How
is Radix contributing to the evolution of
domain names
At
Radix, our vision is to build a world where
domain names are less like phone numbers
which need to be written and stored, but
more like brand names which are easily
remembered. Every
business deserves a domain name that is
short, relevant, and recognizable, one that
adds value to the brand and improves
customer perception.
However, premium domain names often come at a cost
that could go well into several hundred
thousand dollars. The high cost of premium
domains as a trade-off for branding benefits
is not always financially palatable;
especially for new and small businesses.
There is an understandable apprehension
about spending huge sums of money upfront.
What if one made the wrong choice? What if
the business decided to go in a different
direction?
This led us to alter our pricing model for premium
domains. Through that, much like a SaaS
model, end-users can pay an affordable
annual subscription fee instead of thousands
of dollars at once. This frees them up from
burdening their marketing budget.
On the marketing side, our focus has always been to
break into new communities to make them
aware of nTLDs in a creative way. Back in
2016, we launched Startup League to engage with early-stage startups. Earlier this
year, we launched Pitch.Tech
to engage with idea-stage entrepreneurs.
With Break
The Code
we connected with programmers and with MyStartInTech
we connected with tech professionals.
These are just a few examples of many campaigns that
we have launched in the past. The ones that
the Radix team is currently working on are
even bigger and more radical
than ever; and I can’t wait for you all to
see them launch in the near future.
What excites me the most, though, is to work in an
industry that is yet to peak. Things are
evolving fast and will continue to change.
We must bear in mind that any change is
meant to fill gaps in the system, and nTLDs
are filling the gap between demand and
supply while ushering in some much-needed
freshness. The way
remote work has allowed people to disperse,
the evolution of domain names democratizes
the availability of good addresses to
disperse beyond legacy extensions. The
future of nTLDs is looking up and those who
are late to the party (or haven’t heard of
the party at all) are in for a surprise.
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