In New gTLDs, The Only Certainty is Change Watching the news this morning it was hard not to feel bad for the poor Greeks. Yes, their leaders made unwise choices. Yes, they don’t work as many hours as their Northern neighbors. Too many Greek countrymen work for their government, effectively draining the public coffers rather than contributing to the real economy and growing the national pie. Looking over these Southern Europeans roster of sins, their greatest crime (and likely the biggest thing that sets the affairs unfolding in their Country apart from those in your own) is that the unfortunate Greeks don’t have control of an the elastic and universally accepted reserve currency to paper over their ills. Burdened with debt: "Debt crisis" and class struggles in Greece - TPTG Greece was not the first Country to paint itself into such a corner. Zimbabwe, Weimar-Germany and Ancient Rome all lived beyond their means, only to go down in flames amid a great deal of financial turmoil. While you can argue the fiscal underpinnings of the US and its Dollar are not a lot better than those of Greece, it’s still possible to pass a US dollar anywhere on Earth and find some acceptable measure of value for it. Good luck trying to get a more favorable rate of exchange or a more willing counterparty to exchange with when you hold Euro, Pound, Yen or Yuan notes. For all the handwringing about saving vs. spending – Austrian economics vs. Keynesianism – it seems that Keynes followers are “winning” like the Charlie Sheen. No need to worry about the future, because “In the future, we’re all dead!”. The system however flawed, continues to work, until the “7 gram rocks” catch up to you. For me, today’s snapshot of currency pecking order rhymes with the domain World. . COM is the gold standard. Universally accepted and used. Close behind are CC TLD’s; issued and minted by the Country you live in. There are regionally vibrant alternative TLDs like .net, .org, .TV .biz, .me and .co. – some of which are CCTld’s, well marketed and visually appealing as gTLD alternatives. I liken this bunch to currencies accepted in certain instances – like Yen would be accepted in Hong Kong and Korea or Canadian Dollars would be accepted in the northern US states, close to the border. How did we get to this point where .COM has such dominant reserve like status? When I started using the Internet in 1993 .COM was not dominant. Most of the “content” was on .int, .mil, .edu and .gov sites. You found pictures and other information on the CCTLD of the country you lived in. Those not old enough to recall that era should know that I worked for a small ISP in 1995 (I still kick myself for not “getting” domains back then). Site visitors of the day positively vilified us for trying to sell products and services on our homepage. We got hate mail. The Internet’s early (mainly technically purist) visitors heaped scorn on our little company for using the Internet to try to “conduct commerce” on our website. We were denigrating the very fiber of the Internet’s intended purpose by trying to market a product or service. “Everything online should be free!!” or so went the refrain. The negative zeal toward commerce was almost anarchistic and reminds me of early days selling domain names, when all re-sellers of high-quality generic names were labeled with the scarlet letter – “S” for “squatter”. As “S” (for silly) as this early moment sounds, it was real, and it wasn’t until large familiar brands started to move to .COM for “Commerce” – as in – “All you technical purists dumping on me for trying to “SELL” something online, take a chill pill and back-up, because I am using the DOT C-O-M-M-E-R-C-E.” I remember Yahoo and eBay starting the trend and getting flack and negative press from those same tech-purists. Slowly other established household brands woke up. McDonalds put up a placeholder inviting passers by to “click here for a picture of the BigMac”. Burger King did the same for the Whopper. We could all find out what time “Married With Children” came on at Fox.com and so on. I still remember my first moment of URL awareness. I was driving by a billboard on the freeway in Los Angeles circa 1994, (in the midst of a terrible regional drought) and there stood a young Jason Priestley, star of the hit show “90201”, imploring motorists to shower rather than bath, stop watering the lawn and visit CONSERVEWATER.COM, to learn more. How did we get to that evolution where .COM came to rise against other TLDs? The brands had led the way. Everyone else followed. The small brands tried to emulate the big brands so everyone would think they were big too. This whole newfangled Internet thing gave stodgy big-brands a newness and technical street-cred. Everyone was “winning”. I think I saw the dot-craziness peak sometime in 2000 when Honeywell got a 1 billion dollar stock pop thanks to Maria Bartiromo on CNBC, announcing the launch of MYAIRCRAFT.COM (a site that’s not doing much today). Reading over this little series of memories it’s fairly easy for me to prognosticate some potential outcomes for new gTLDs. Yet again the brands will lead with a relatively small clutch of early adopters showing the way. We’ll see it on the freeway, as a grayer Jason Priestley may pitch fuel-conserving cars at Prius.Toyota or Electric.BMW. On the next billboard one could imagine a proper and leathery Mickey Rourke, raising his glass with a steely smooth invitation to Drink.JohnieWalker or Enjoy.GreyGoose. Some time later you’ll see changes to email encouraged by Google with their rollout of .GMAIL including addresses that look like this: your.name@GMAIL (no dots)– The banks will embrace the security of dotless email too and their “official” emails will bypass quaint but instantly obsolete solutions such as .BANK and .SECURE. Within less than 5 years you’ll be emailing your bank contact at Bob.Smith@WellsFargo – everyone will want one of those new, authoritative, hipper no-dot email addresses. The big brands that were not in the first round of applications will exert immense pressure to have the application window open again and there will be 10,000 strings in round 2, followed by 30,000 more in round 3. Once again, I predict no shortage of willing participants who hope to emulate the Fortune 1,000. With the last of Pandora’s torso free from her box you can expect to see technical standards change more quickly because corporate America, Europe and Asia will demand it. Get ready for some new faces to show up at ICANN meetings of the future. Inviting marketing into the root will see the face of business and Corporate America show up. There will be less attorneys and technical intermediaries than the past, if only on a volume basis – at least one ICANN meeting per year will feel more like a COMDEX show than an ICANN meet. All this new marketing for more intuitive site labels will drive the acceptance and navigation to generic SLDs like Used.Cars; just as generic intuitive SLD’s such as PickupTrucks.com became more viable due to brands marketing URLs like ToyotaTrucks.com or EbayMotors.com before them. Today’s technically savvy Internet user will require much less time than the 14 years it took a stunned World to come to grips with the concept of .COM SLDs Existing SLD holders don’t fret. The .COM and the CCtld of the Country you are in will still have its place, and value. The birth of modern Los Angeles did not cause a mass-exodus from New York City. It just gave us a great new place to visit. One could argue that if New York were the only great city in America it would be much bigger today. Perhaps more poignantly, AM Radio continues to have its place but it is not the throne of prominence it once enjoyed in the absence of FM, Satellite and Internet Radio. Marketing campaigns incorporating more intuitive phrase SLDs, facilitated by a broad spectrum of alternative gTLDs, offered simultaneously, en-masse, will likely catch-on and work toward marginalizing some existing gTLDs and .COM SLDs. Then again, good SLDs in new extensions won’t be free and you can expect .COM prices to act as a benchmark. You could make the argument that the lack of GTLD spectrum alternatives today could already be driving users to Facebook and Twitter handles. The growth of Social networks could at least partly be caused by the lack of innovation in traditional naming. We just don’t have enough good names or enough consumer friendly technology at the existing name registries, and that lack of supply can have the effect of stifling demand from consumers. Or shifting demand. It’s a short thought process to say user-friendly social networks are filling the vacuum in viable and innovative naming. The pontifications above are just that. It is too early to say with certainty what the outcome will be. The catalysts that could change things relate to the number of strings delegated. If only 500 strings are approved and half of them fail to gain use – or if the brands are limited from applying, thus marginalizing those that do, then I predict an alternate outcome. Recall the time when Budweiser switched their core marketing to Bud.TV, only to retreat to the familiar Bud.Com when they realized they alone were “innovating” in that space. I submit that the reason new-gTLD launches of the past failed to shake things up or marginalize .COM’s dominant position is because there were not enough “good alternatives” launched simultaneously, to be truly viable or challenge the global juggernaut .COM had become. A limited spectrum with just a few average and middling gTLD alternatives makes .COM the only really safe bet. As with the US dollar denominated World we live in, there is safety in numbers. Bud.tv or .info or .biz or .mobi are no challenge to a well entrenched dot com. Flip that World on it’s head to where every corporation has a chance to operate from a unique gTLD and watch the social acceptance of such strings increase exponentially. As with finance in present day Greece or ancient Rome, the status quo works, until suddenly, it doesn’t anymore. Nobody can accurately predict the tipping point. People will default to .COM names until the price of renewals is too high, or until there is a large enough spectrum of viable alternatives and until enough .BRANDS market those alternatives to acceptability. Regardless of your viewpoint on the future potential of new gTLDs, whether you agree with my theories or not, you should open your mind to the possibilities ahead, much as you did when you registered your first .COM name. The registrants of the future who take registrations in these new spaces are no crazier than you were in the early days when you registered your .COM. There are 7 billion people on the planet and in my experience there are not enough meaningful names to satisfy the demand of all individuals and businesses that will soon reach adult age. The lack of mnemonic alternatives in .COM and CCTLDs has driven people and businesses to make unwise compromises in naming. I am certain that this new gTLD window will bring some significant changes that we should all prepare for. All of us who have the pleasure and privilege of participating in the evolution of the naming system have to concede that we are living through epic and most-interesting times. There are very few people – very few collective individuals with the desire, experience and skillset to operate successful naming related enterprises in 2012. In a World where the Facebook IPO has become synonymous with the Internet, it’s fair to say that domain names and naming could be viewed as a lost art. Many of naming’s most successful operators are either too financially successful or diversified to care about moving the ball forward. We are a chronically understaffed and very esoteric industry. I for one stand ready as ever to serve name registrants and portfolio operators regardless of the string names end-in or the currency we ultimately provide services under. My team has built some industry changing tools to market and sell SLDs of all stripe and color. We look forward to rolling out those changes this summer and autumn. If our friends in Greece taught me anything today it’s that nothing is certain – the only constant is change. I look forward to embracing the changes that lie ahead whether the billboard I pass features Mickey Rourke, Jason Priestley or Charlie Sheen; whether my Ferrari is gas or electric – and whether the domain names we manage end in .COM .NET or .SOMETHINGELSE .. I encourage all others to keep the same open mind.

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Personalized Music Video Service Cull TV Acquired By Twitvid, CEO Departs Sarah Perez posted 36 mins ago Social video network Twitvid has closed another acquisition today, following its March deal which involved bringing the team from daily deals aggregator Frugalo on board. Today, the company is announcing it has acquired Cull TV, an independent music video sharing site, which CTO John Hurliman describes as a little bit like Pandora mixed with MTV. Cull TV, founded in early 2011, currently offers a catalog of some 2 to 3 million videos, with 100 brand-new ones appearing per day. The service offers 25 prominent channels devoted to various genres, but gets more specific than just “indie rock” or “hip hop.” Some of the featured channels today, for example, include “Euro Popped,” and “New Chilean Rock,” to give you an idea of how niche some of the content can be. The company relies on its in-house team of experts to curate the selections to determine what’s trending, but it also relies on the wider web of music bloggers, Hurliman explains. There’s other technology behind the site, too, which involves “a lot of web analysis and continuous crawling” to find out which bands and videos are generally popular. And Cull TV can customize channels to your own interests as well. “Once you log in with Facebook on the site,” adds Hurliman, “we can get a lot more personalized intelligence by looking at your Facebook posts and your Facebook likes to determine what bands you like and turn those into continuous video playlists,” he says. As for Twitvid’s interest in the site, it goes far beyond curating music videos. Explains Twitvid CEO Mo Al Adham, “we’re going to use a lot of the know-how and knowledge the [Cull TV] team has acquired to integrate those learnings into Twitvid,” he says. Cull TV did a lot of work in figuring out how to get really great content out of long tail video, and knows how to use a combination of manual curation and algorithms to surface the most relevant content. “We hope to bring what we did very well in independent music, and broaden that out to Twitvid’s more generic approach to all of long-tail video,” Hurliman says. During the transition period, Cull TV will remain up-and-running for at least the next few months, but whether it will remain up indefinitely has yet to be determined. Also of note, Cull TV CEO Katherine de León will not be joining the Twitvid team, but will be moving on to a new project. Terms of the acquisition were not disclosed, but the results of the integration will arrive soon after Twitvid’s big product announcement they’re teasing for June (hopefully a new iPad experience). According to CEO Al Adham, Twitvid has more than doubled the number of video views it serves over the past five to six months, now in the range of 70 million+ views. The last time they talked to press, the Twitvid network was seeing 10 million unique visitors. Today, that’s over 15 million. Stay tuned.

.mobi, .biz, .co, .xxx, RIP, .COM, .TV, .ME, PARTY HARDY! Morning Folks!! Numbers have always been my roadmap. Numbers cut through all the motives, agendas and bull**** and hopes and all the rest. Numbers don't lie people do. I am guilty of forming opinions based on numbers regardless of the fallout or who is involved and I have done that since 1996. I test and I report. I invest to find REAL answers. My reports cut all ways because I just follow them wherever those numbers lead and to the conclusions they provide. I now have some conclusions and if you have been following my posts over the past year you won't be surprised. Some will always squeal but that is becuase they are emotionally and finacially invested in whatever results I find if it does not dovetail with what they want to hear and their agenda. First of all anything can be sold. Any extension has an aftermarket. So there is always money to be made. So let's be clear on that. Even manure has value. .Com is universal because you can put any word or combination of words and it sounds good not awkward. Howver you can't say that about all extensions. Even extensions I like have limits. .ME in particular. Call to action verbs and some nouns. Not all work well or sound good. There are limits. .TV may be more universal as you can put anything that would naturally go with TV before the dot. So at this point in time I would say .COM, .TV, .ME, Are the 3 primary extensions today and into the years ahead. We will see if any of the nexw extensions are universal. I can't see more than a handful even having a chance and I don't count .Company because I see that more as an Intranet as oppoed to an Internet. .mobi, .biz, .co, .xxx, RIP. These extensions have had the benefits of a single star on stage and have yet to reap much in the way of rewards. Again, you can flip these extensions and make a living. I don't focus on that. I focus on raw and natural value and whether it will go up or down in the future. I just see them now with limited futures because the NUMBERS point that way. Could that change? Sure! But it is doubtful with thousands of next extensions entering the marketplace. That said, you can do well promoting ANY extension IF and ONLY IF you own the .COM counterpart. Sorry, this is just not a debatable issue except for people that are ignorant on the subject. Any other choice and it is guaranteed to cost you a significant portion of business. That business that is lost is the cream, the profit. It is not just another sale. It is not just another 1000 sales. So while companies go googoo over SEO, they are missing the more important piece of the puzzle which is a "Domain Strategy". See this was not something that was debateable before O.co as far as I was concerend. But when they went public and announced the amount of folks that were actually confused was the majority of folks. 61% to be precise. What IDIOT can copy that KNOWING this?? That is my position! I mean I would have to define an idiot as making a business decision that could cost them up to 61% or more of ALL of their NEW business. Now I am NOT calling the guys at Overstock, idiots. Quite the contrary. They had the balls to try something and when it did not work they had the balls to change course. They even had the balls to announce the actual numbers. So the folks I am calling idiots is anyone that has that information and still ignores it or buries it. That's an idiot by my definition. Ignoring important information and not learning from other peoples mistakes. Personally I wanted to develop Rick.TV. But each time I think of doing it I just refer back to what I just wrote. I don't own Rick.com. That means much of the fruit of MY labor will end up somewhere else. That's a bad equation. I even went out and got Rick.co. But without the .com version I just know I will always being running faster than I actually am. Now I might launch Rick.TV anyways because I do believe in "Destinations" and hopefully I can overcome the hurdle by drawing attention to the difference. When 1-800-MATTRESS came along they had a problem. There were 8 letters in a 7 digit telephone number. So to educate the consumer their slogan was "Leave off the last "S" for savings!" That was enough to do the trick. So when .co does not have a slogan bringing attention to the differnce, there is no difference and the result is 61% being misguided. Some of those folks will still find them. But it won't be the majority. The answers are always in the numbers and those that ignore numbers are ignorant and since they do it knowing full well that the numbers will tell them the truth, they don't ewant to know the truth and the facts and that by my definition makes them idiots. So idiots have 2 choices in life. Remain idiots or instead of getting insulted, actually look at the numbers and realize spitting in the wind won't hurt me, it will only hurt you. There is no longer an excuse. 17 years and enough facts and numbers to prove the point. It's a compass. Ignore it at your own peril. Rick Schwartz