GTLDs and The Immutable Laws of Marketing

This morning I got two emails from folks trying to sell me their .TV names.  If these were .Com names you'd say: "That's a good name" ..  I like the .TV extension from a meaning and resonance perspective, so why wouldn't I buy these names?

Years ago someone gave me a book called the 22 immutable laws of marketing..  While I can't remember all 22 (or much of the book), laws 1 and 2 always stuck with me:

1. Be 'first' to market.

2. If you can't be first to market, find something else to be first in.

When I make a toll free call in the US I remember 800 as a prefix, even though 888 numbers should be easier to remember.  You only need one keypad key for the 888 number after all.  Yet take a "man on the street" straw-poll and 800 is at the forefront of the 'toll free' collective conscience, decades after the launch of the better 888 and alternative 877, 866 prefixes.

A similar dynamic takes place in .com.  Expedia runs commercials with their "Dot Cooommmm" jingle, most major sites own their corresponding dot com name whether they use it or not. How hard is this collective mental branding to undo?  Look at Craigslist..  Craig Newmark's wildly popular directory.  They have been using Craigslist .ORG for years, redirecting the .COM as a pointer to their preferred .ORG .. This log of last month's searches with the domain extension appended reveals that their users look for the un-marketed .com name more than their actual .org address.

To tell you the truth,  I still take a lot of that "be first" stuff with a grain of salt.  I love to root for the underdog and Avis did build a pretty good car rental company with the slogan "We try harder".  In a large economy, there is always room for a new competitor to out-execute and out perform if they are well run and managed.

To out execute .Com with a better GTLD you have to understand what made .Com number one in the first place. .Com was the first GTLD ..  but it also gave its registrant population security.  There were consistent, predictable renewal fees.  Smart people are not going to build their McMansions in a police state where registrants are told who can live in the house and with annual property taxes are equivalent to the value of the home. Similarly, domain registrants are not going to build their primary website in a domain space where the extension is policed for content (as in some restricted TLDs) or where the renewal fees are oppressive such as in .TV ..  .TV is run by the same registry operator as .com so it's likely that the registry operator understands this stuff but just doesn't care enough to make .TV outperform their existing .Com.

I think there is an opportunity to create an alternative to .Com, but that registry would have to plan at the outset in order to foster the rights of registrants, giving people hope for their own success and inspiring them to cheerlead and carry the marketing torch for the new space.  Who else could do this aside from those I've mentioned previously?  I could see a big registrar like Godaddy launching a .Go extension. Godaddy is the world's largest domain registrar, they know how to interact with people. Godaddy could leverage their reach in the domain realm to offer .go extension names when a user's preferred extension is unavailable. They could offer their registrants the promise of security via long term, predictable renewal fees hinged to inflation. They could foster speculation and libertarian like freedoms within the space. Speculators and Investors are an extension's best PR men and women after all.

All-in-all I think .Com will still be the number one extension in my lifetime, but I think there is room for a well managed registry to come in and take significant share by winning over registrants in poorly managed alternative TLD's with unpredictable, clog-like renewals and nebulous rules that take the joy out of being a registrant in those spaces.

Comments

[Christopher Ambler]

Well, not .Go, since 2-letter TLDs are reserved for ISO 1366 entries of country codes.

But they could do .GoD, which would have the secondary benefit of locking-up the religious market :-)

(Thank you, I'm here all week)

***FS*** clap clap clap :)

[Cameron Johnson]

Great writing Frank. Thanks. Almost makes me regret the premium .tv's I foolishly ponied up for ;)

***FS*** Somehow I don't think you'll have to worry Cam. :)

[Colin Pape]

Hi Frank,

I really liked the 22 immutable laws as well! It definitely influenced the way I view branding...

There's a fairly comprehensive summary of the book available here for anyone that's interested:

http://www.ries.com/iframes/book3-summaries-long.php#introduction

Thanks for the great post! I look forward to reading your blog every morning... :)

[Dr. Christopher Hartnett]

Ok Frank, I get all the "DOT TV is a police state" argument and I couldn't agree more. This whole DOT TV renewal thing is off the charts and needs to be carefully restructured and Richard has some serious work ahead of him if he wants this extension to be extremely successful. That being said, let's look at some other basic rules of marketing and rules of success here:

1. "Critics build nothing." One of the largest real estate developers in the United States had that sign above his desk for 20 years. Any new idea is most vulnerable in the early stages. It is easy for people to take shots from the peanut gallery because there isn't a track record to lean on yet. Look at almost any successful person on the planet. In the beginning, they usually take a great deal of heat. That is just the ante to get in the game. The persistent succeed, the faint of heart, listen to others rather than to their inner selves and doubt.

2. "We might be too close to the fire here, to see the real bigger picture". Yes, because we are in the domain business, we know about the onerous DOT TV renewal fees etc... and the open ended DOT TV extension fees are a problem BUT, the public doesn't have a clue about any of this "inner business" stuff nor do they care. They LOVE the DOT TV extension, Period. We all grew up with "TV". We all own it, the concept and the actual physical set. It is ours. We begged to watch it as kids and for many; it was their only "Family Time" in their household. Be it Ed Sullivan and the Beatles, Jack Ruby killing Lee Harvey Oswald on prime time or Patty Hearst and the SLA shoot out, The Nixon - Kennedy debates, the first moon walk (all of this may be before some of your time) the TV bought major real live world events into our lives for the very first time. Before that, for our parents, it was ALL ABOUT THE RADIO. We are married to that visual box in the living room and most people have bought it into their bedrooms and the kitchen and even the bathroom. For the public, not just the domain trade, when you mess with TV, you are messing with something basic. Similarly, the public is going to embrace DOT TV. Why? Because they have a long standing love affair with the TV and it has only bought them pleasure almost all their lives and it is easier and more familiar than DOT COM. Will it replace DOT COM? Heck no. Will it get great typed in traffic? You better believe it. If you were "John Q Public" and you knew this extension was an option, would you rather type in Rock.TV or Rock.com to download your favorite music flix? TV suggests something VISUAL. DOT COM suggests something COMplicated. It is used because the public had no choice. Now they are going to be given that choice.

3. "DOT COM" was a hard sell, compared to this, DOT TV is easy. Who knew what DOT COM was or what it meant in the beginning days of the internet? Remember the first time you told your parents or someone over 65 about how to enter a .com URL into a browser. It was their first experience with the internet. DOT WHAT? Do I type DOT or do I just put a (.) there? Talk about an up hill climb. People had to be taught a whole new world, a whole new paradigm. With DOT TV, they are just being asked to make a change to something they are easy with and already have a live long love affair with. "TV". What could be simpler? Instead of DOT COM, just type in DOT TV, Dad.

I bought my father his DOT TV extension a few days ago. I bought one for all my kids and my wife. I bought one for all my friends. I bought a few of these names because I just like the sound of TV. I also bought a few of Premium DOT TV names at the "buy it now" auction. Am I going to get rich off this? Who knows? I'm usually pretty lucky when it comes to money. We will see what we will see. One thing is for sure. It only takes a few seconds for the over 75 crowd to get the DOT TV concept and how it relates to the whole INTERNET in general. It goes something like this:
"Instead of typing in .com, just type in .TV", mom. It is that easy, they get it that quick. A major rule in marketing, "GIVE THE PEOPLE SOMETHING THEY WANT AND MAKE IT EASY FOR THEM TO USE AND UNDERSTAND IT".

4. Finally Frank, we have the issue of a possible "conflict of interest" for all of us here. We all have DOT COM names and you are probably the biggest of the biggest in that extension. We all applaud you for this genius and we are grateful you share your wisdom with us on a daily basis. But, you have to admit, this fact would make it hard for you especially to embrace a new extension.

The guy with SMUT.com (whoever he may be, I don't know or care) is going to get pretty nervous when they launch SMUT.tv some day. 38% of the online male population in the USA isn't going to care what the DOT TV renewal fees are when they type-in the latter rather than the former extension. The Public is going to type in the DOT TV version because they rather see flix than still pictures or written content. DOT COM will go down in internet history as the pioneer and the beginning "Static" extension and DOT TV will go down as the "Bridge" extension that will take the internet into its interactive future.

We have seen it before, silent films morph into talkies, black and white films morph into color films, snail mail into email, 8 tracks into cassettes, cassettes into cd's, video cassettes into DVD's, DVD's into Zipped Downloads and NetFlix. I was shown a compression technology from India the other day that can download an entire full length Movie in less than a minute. Are you going to watch that flick on Movies.TV or Movie.com? We are in a constant state of change. That is the nature of life. Nothing stays the same. We either ride the wave of progress or we let it pass us by. At this point, we may want to just make sure the surfboard doesn't hit us in the head.

***FS*** Hi Doc.. I don't think .tv is a polkice state.. was refering to other namespaces that doom themselves to irrelevence there. My knock on .tv was the draconian renewal prices. You perspective is wise and welcome.. just wanted to give you mine.

[Dr. Christopher Hartnett]

Thanks Frank. You are truly a fair and honorable man. Showing both sides of the coin allows for a fair flip and is one of the many reasons your blog is so successful and a true joy to read.

[Hairy Ape Like Creature]

>>"They have been using Craigslist .ORG for years, redirecting the .COM as a pointer to their preferred .ORG .. This log of last month's searches with the domain extension appended reveals that their users look for the un-marketed .com name more than their actual .org address."<<

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Actually Frank, this statement is like many of your posts in this blog, factual in reality, but still misleading - because intentionally or not you don't take into account the context and perspective why some things are the way they are.

So it's not that straight forward even in the case of Craigslist.org vs. Craigslist.com

The reason they have more searches for .com than for .org in this case is due to POSITIVE REINFORCEMENT on the part of Craigslist. Meaning, whenever the user types in Craigslist.com either directly in the url bar (and is then forwarded to .org) or via search engine, they still end up at their desired destination Craigslist (.org), so a lot of users are completely unaware that they actually typed in "unofficial" ("wrong") extension -- and even if they do realize it they still have no real and palpable incentive to "correct their behavior" or to "learn" to type Craiglist.org in future when their previous action (searching for Craiglist.com) was successfully rewarded and always worked just as well.

You'd see the real difference if the Craiglist people didn't forward .com to .org, and served just the blank page instead. In that case users would quickly learn that the ONLY WAY to get to Craigslist is to type in .ORG and not .COM, which would in turn modify their behavior accordingly, and would also translate itself into different Overture numbers (those that are much more skewed toward .org then .com).

***FS*** Ape, while I thought about your concept of positive reinforcement relating to the active.com vs an inactive.com I do not believe it ultimately makes a 'hill of beans' in difference.. perhaps you'd like to post an example of an inactive .com (active org or something else) where the ov rank is lower to support? I invite you to continue to point out factual accuracies that are misleading.. as all in all you're not a bad gadfly (gadmonkey) ;)

[Hairy Ape Like Creature]

>>"Perhaps you'd like to post an example of an inactive .com (active org or something else) where the ov rank is lower to support?"<<

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Earthlink guys forward Earthlink.com to Earthlink.net, and yet Earthlink.net is much more searched than Earthlink.com

And then some of the other few examples below undisputably very much show that what I was saying in previous post indeed makes more than 'hill of beans' in difference despite what some of us might believe.

Free.fr vs. Free.com

Freemail.hu vs. Freemail.com

Comcast.net vs. Comcast.com

W3.org W3.com

Leo.org vs. Leo.com

Imageshack.us vs. Imagashack.com

Fanfiction.net vs. Fanfiction.com

Last.fm vs. Last.com

Atlas.cz vs. Atlas.com

Arabmusic.us vs. Arabmusic.com

Archive.org vs. Archive.com

Unicef.org vs. Unicef.com

Php.net vs. Php.com

Volvocars.us vs. Volvocars.com (even though Volvocars.com is also an active Volvo cars site)

Un.org vs. Un.com

...

Even in case like Flickr.com vs. Flicker.com it's obvious that the "learned" users are conditioned to search and find the proper destination despite the phonetic or visual illogicality of that destination. You can bet that the Flicker.com would be a lot more searched if the Flickr.com guys (Yahoo) owned that domain too and just chose to forward it to Flickr.com (positive reinforcement) like what the Craiglist or Wikipedia guys are doing.

It's all humanly logical. Once "educated", people flock to "content" (useful site), and not "technicality" (extension), even though many users/searchers do make mistakes or are lazy to correct their mistakes (especially if they are not rewarded for it).

Ultimately, difference in extension (especially between major extensions) also lead to the old argument of importance of generic vs. non-generic domains.

and I would argue,

that the extensions (more so) and generic domains (less so) are important (or even cruical) only if you are into pure tangible goods sales business (rumcakes, cars...) or are small merchant, just starting out in online sales and are looking for any "edge", or don't have the huge budget to "teach" your users via branding efforts. For big guys, with big pockets (who are undoubtedly aware of relative strategic importance of some domains but chose to be lax about it) and who are more into "service/content/pop culture industry" (as opposed to pure "sales") and/or who are starting new brands/trends/fads/ -- generic and/or highly meaningful domains are simply not that important despite our efforts to wake them up and make them smell "our coffeee".

Which all leads to the ultimate paradox whereby meaningful generic domains (and even better extensions) are actually most important to people/entities who are less likely to grasp their significance at the present time, or be able to afford them.

***FS*** Very nice ape.. I concede to your way of thinking then.. However the fact that some spill traffic still flows to the .com in each example cited above, illustrates the power of the mindset that of people the content should be at .com. That drawing power is hard to unwind and it does not cut the other way.. a great site at a .cc extension may draw visits but a great site at .com will not draw a comparable relative % in .cc. to be fair there are unique circumstances in each of the examples you gave above.. the best one which most closely matches the dynamic at play in Craigslist is your Unicef example.. and there score is 292 vs 345 (for an obviously benevolent site even) .. in all cases the counts range from significant to very close. Again, appreciate your comment.

[Javier Marti]

.tv is an interesting concept indeed, and I have to admit to Christophe that he is right in the extension being the most natural for everyone, in the whole world. And that alone means a lot.

I made a .tv experiment the other day. The drag and drop interface is certainly easy to use to create your own playlist of (mostly borrowed)videos, whowever, most of this content has been produced by someone else and is being posted everywhere regardless of copyright laws.
I think that in the long term, yes, .tv would succeed, but in the short term, its destiny is tied up to the outcome of the Viacom against Google case and what that will mean for copyright laws in America. (in my opinion, these laws will have to change anyway, but this lawsuit may delay that change, at least in America. However, if .tv would be a swedish company, things could be different...we may start to see these kind of companies "emigrating" their legal base for this reason in the near future)

Since most copyrighted material is "borrowed", if Google is found guilty and obliged to take offline thousands of its videos from youTube, then the opportunity for the regular Joe to "broadcast to the world" is not real. Yes, you could do it, but it would be the same old story: producing content
and keeping it fresh and interesting is the tricky part...how many people can do that?
The other interesting point about all this that goes in favour of .tv is that their main target market sees the opportunity and embrace it much more quickly and easily -I am an old man, I am 32- than us. If .tv is promoted properly to the 12-25 range, I can see even people in poor countries putting their little savings aside to buy their .tv chance to "stardom". Of course they won't all do it, but as the 0000s of videos uploaded to youTube prove, the new generations -that certainly don't even understand nor care about renewal fees(or copyright laws for that matter)- will be the ones that would fuel this trend by the millions.

However this will only happen with more publicity around the net. This is not happening right now but I guess we'll see much more of it in the coming months. They have to, if they want it to succeed.

Virality has its limits, when there is a further barrier entry of 24.95 . Uploading to youTube is free...

Regards
Javier

[Dan]

Well, if you want to get technical, .tv actually means Tuvalu, not Television.

And .com isn't "the first gTLD"; it's the same age as .org, .net, .edu, .gov, and .mil.

***FS*** Thank-you for getting technical :)