On 31 March 2011 18:46, Antony Van Couvering <avc@avc.vc> wrote:
What about the the 600K registrants in .CO? Are they all either profiteers or deluded by smoke and mirrors?
Perhaps. Let me know if you see any new content under .co that couldn't exist under a different TLD. Don't forget defensive registrations along with the speculative and delusional. And is that really 600K registrants, or 600K registrations by 14 people? It would indeed be interesting to know how many .cos are actually used for original content -- as opposed to immediately handed to Sedo or hosting PPC park pages (I've just gone to a dozen or so randomly-selected "generic-word.co" sites, and all are park pages -- in fact cars.co is a park page hosted by Sedo!) So much for claims of lowering the prices... And finally, one can indeed speak partly to the delusion aspect. How much .co marketing tells potential registrants that their domain is ultimately under the control of -- and has traditionally been associated with -- a specific nationality? The word "Colombia" appears nowhere on the home page of http://www.cointernet.co/ The "who we are" page exclaims "Powered by Colombia" but nowhere explains quite what that means, except to mention that a partner in the venture is a Columbian company. Nowhere (that I could easily find on the .co website) is the link between ".co" and the country of Columbia made clear -- yet it's right at the top of the WIkipedia entry, so it's important to the entry's authors. So...is the marketing closer to deception or full disclosure? Make up your own mind. (Of course, Verisign is no better with .tv, but the folks who run .nu are more up-front) - Evan