Jothan,

The article speaks for the attitude of the legacy virtual real estate operators who need to
profit from buying and reselling domain names. With such a torrent of new domain options
available the main commodity - scarcity - that prevailed previously, has been diluted.

The challenge facing many new registries (and I am one of them, and facing it) is to find a way
to reach enough genuine end-user registrants who would find the new domain attractive
and adopt it. There again, many of such potential registrants already have a domain
identity which they would probably want to maintain. So it will be quite an exercise!

The work of the UASG is therefore critical to ensuring new gTLDs are not tainted with a
'potential non-resolving' label by the marketplace, that would add to the challenge!

Best

Tony Harris

On Fri, Sep 11, 2015 at 6:02 PM, Jothan Frakes <jothan@jothan.com> wrote:
Inconvenient truth - it reflects largely what the industry (outside registries and registrars) sentiment is.  Unfortunately he kind of nails it.  Elliot Silver is a well respected blogger within the domain name investment community.

The more sad truth is not the article, but that there is unfortunately a 'point away from myself' attitude about nTLD awareness (which I'd expand to say IDN, IDN nTLD, IDN ccTLD, and new TLDs in general).

I'll mildly revise that - nTLD Registries have been undertaking some awareness campaigns but it has been typically focused upon where they can sell registrations or to obtain anchor tenants to attract required community/geo support or registration revenue.

I've tried to give nTLDs a fighting chance within the NamesCon conferences, so that people can learn about new TLDs as they are launching and make their own decisions about their level of attraction/opportunity within them, but it must be nuanced messaging to help attract interest rather than push nTLDs - so as to not trigger the fear-based emotional reactions that come from many who have a vested interest in the status-quo and scarcity of .COM, such as the author of that blog.

There is a lot of energy around ICANN funding awareness campaigns and funding them through use of last-resort TLD auction proceeds or other nTLD program fee surplus,  If managed correctly and well executed, such activity could increase awareness and interest.

Meanwhile, I'll throw in a +1 on your subject line along with whatever emoticon I can find to represent a mime tear.

-Jothan



Jothan Frakes
Tel: +1.206-355-0230


On Fri, Sep 11, 2015 at 1:38 PM, Mark Svancarek <marksv@microsoft.com> wrote: