Interview with Jon Nevett and Mason Cole of Donuts

Donuts filed for distribution rights of 307 new gTLDs

[Webwork]

This month, I had the opportunity to interview Jon Nevett and Mason Cole of Donuts, the largest filer of generic top-level domains (gTLD) applications . . a company that filed for 307 gTLDs, including most notably .COMPUTER, .CONDOS, .EMAIL, .ENTERPRISES, .FASHION, .MEDIA, and .NETWORK . .

. . Its first batch of domains including .LIGHTING, .GURU, .VENTURES, .CAMERA, .CLOTHING, .HOLDINGS, .SINGLES and .VOYAGE have entered or will soon enter the sunrise period -- a time for exclusive access to registrations for trademark holders . .

"At a high level," said Nevett, "the existing name space is overused and worn out. As new businesses start up, they can't find what they want in the existing name space so they end up with a crazy mix of consonants and vowels because that's all that's available in dot com. . . Small businesses like plumbers or contractors don't need to be in a domain with the millions of pizza shops, they need to be in the .PLUMBING or .CONTRACTING domain that makes sense for their businesses."

Full Clickz article here: [clickz.com ]

Are you buying their argument or their domains?

How did we ever survive without 1000s of alternative gTLDs . . and how will we exist with this new paradigm?

Will they attempt to sell that Google will somehow favorably treat a new gTLD in its ranking formulas? How will that play . . or not . . with Goggle, itself, applying to act as registrar of ~100 gTLDs? Think the FTC or the EU might want to take a look to see if favorable treatment is a bad idea?

Interesting times. Are you thinking ahead . . or sitting back? Entitle this "There Will be Blood" or "The New Frontier"?

[jmccormac]

To quote a great philosopher, it's Deja Vue all over again. There was an artificial drought created in the domain name business between 2005 and 2010. It was caused by Domain Tasters hoovering up all the good domains from the daily drops. It basically created the "all the good domains are gone" situation. But the problem was that it also created a monster beyond ICANN's grasp - that of the ccTLDs. The growth of the ccTLDs in this period was massive. Now when ICANN was shamed into doing something about the Domain Tasting problem, the problem disappeared. Many of the new gTLDs would have had their genesis in this artificial drought. But they are, for the most part, trying to solve a problem that has already been solved. But more importantly, the market has changed.

The Nixon presidential campaign quote springs to mind but some of them were in the business of selling used domains. :) Now I have to figure out if I should develop a good new gTLD orientated domain name or sell it.

Regards...jmcc