Little anecdote: several years ago, the city where i live decided to add a new area code to handle the increasing demand on phone numbers. At first, if your phone number used this new area code and you gave it to someone, they would ask "did you just move here?" or "um, do you have a local number?" And i'm guessing there were also a lot of wrong numbers dialed. Then thanks to a couple of discount cellphone providers, the new area code became popular and now nobody bats an eye at it.

I can see the same thing happening with the gTLDs. Right now it's .com and .org, but if enough websites start using a new gTLD, over time people will get used to it, but it'll take a year or two. .info sounds like a good candidate especially since it's a common term in many European languages (and maybe that's why a lot of travel sites have signed up with it), but then it'll be weird to have a blog or an ecommerce site with a .info domain.

but if enough websites start using a new gTLD, over time people will get used to it, but it'll take a year or two.

Absolutely and inevitable unless companies want to start using extremely long names such as mycompanynamelimitedwhichevercountry.com

<possibly offtopic>

I've seen this recently with a trade customer of mine and he has companyname.ie pointing to companynameie.com, personally I feel this looks silly however each to their own.

What would give alternative extensions a great assistance, and possibly free up lots of available .com/net/org names, would be if the search engines would pass on the PR etc to that new name without it having to have years of SE history.

I have quite a few 10+ year old .com's I would quite happily release if their histories and rankings were transferable to a .co.uk/.in/.cn/etc.

I do realise this is fraught with all sorts of possible problems and I'm not even sure it is feasible!

Maybe this is more for the search engine forum however it would have great implications for both domainers and businesses alike.

</possibly offtopic>

> "Absolutely and inevitable unless companies want to start using extremely long names such as mycompanynamelimitedwhichevercountry.com"

That assumes people only buy domains for $10 from Godaddy. There is quite a domain name after market these days however where quality domains sell for a lot of money.

...would a business go setup in Baja Mexico because all the land in San Diego is taken?

If we use traditional real estate as a model and assume .com to be the equivalent of the established desirable neighborhood then we can apply another analogy: in real estate the desirable neighborhoods rise first, rise the fastest, and fall last. Consider the echo boom around California. Most established places in California went to the moon while surrounding states that people flocked to as a low-cost alternative went up ... but not nearly as much.

Apply that same psychology to the domains after market and I can see where .info will certainly rise in value - but does it ever become as valuable? doubtful.

The other big issue: commerce is what drives the value of a good name - .info is implicitly incompatible with commerce. If you are a for-profit company - everyone knows .com is what to use. Another reason the big money will probably never chase .info.

If we use traditional real estate as a model and assume .com to be the equivalent of the established desirable neighborhood then we can apply another analogy.

That's an excellent analogy and one that I've used previously.

With that in mind, I think .com will be the predominant gTLD for many more years to come. Unless of course an Act of a Higher Power intervenes. ;)

You can buy beach front property in Baja mexico for 1/5 the price of land that looks identical in Sa Diego just 10 miles away. Probably a good analog for comparison: .com->.info as San Diego -> Rosarito.

That reminds me some years ago I wanted to buy "Rosario.com", because of my wife's name. All TLD taken. But I told her "Rosarito", so, I thought, that must be untaken. To my surprise: all TLD taken too!

.info at least makes sense -- some of the TLDs people applied for during the same period at ICANN:

[icann.org...]

NameSpace alone wanted:

.ads
.agency
.aids
.air
.antiques
.art
.artists
.auction
.audio
.bbs
.books
.cafe
.cam
.card
.cars
.center
.city
.channel
.church
.club
.commerce
.computers
.consulting
.culture
.design
.digital
.direct
.dtv
.dvd
.factory
.fashion
.festival
.fiction
.film
.films
.foundation
.free
.fun
.fund
.funds
.gallery
.games
.gay
.graphics
.group
.guide
.hotel
.help
.history
.index
.insurance
.jazz
.jobs
.lab
.mad
.mag
.magic
.mail
.market
.media
.men
.monitor
.movie
.music
.news
.now
.nyc
.one
.online
.opera
.page
.partners
.people
.planet
.politics
.power
.productions
.projects
.properties
.radio .records
.school
.service
.sex
.shoes
.shop
.show
.security
.society
.sound
.shareware
.site
.software
.solutions
.soup
.space
.sports
.star
.studios
.sucks
.systems
.tech
.temple
.theater
.time
.times
.toys
.trade
.travel
.voice
.war
.watch
.weather
.women
.world
.writer
.zine
.zone

I like ".fun" and ".war"... what the 773H were they thinking?

I like ".fun" and ".war"... what the 773H were they thinking?

My favorite from the list is .soup

chickennoodle.soup :)

maybe this is the ultimate solution - unlimited extensions.
Fed.Ex, Wal.Mart, U.S.A., etc

You know what, I really glad that you chaps are really hot on your .coms, beverly hills of the internet, great, even better, perhaps you should all live there, in .com land

Meanwhile, if yah got any pesky, unwanted, .biz or .info generics, do be so kind as to let us non beverly hills dweller know about them

Thanks

There were 2 .info's in the Live auction at Moniker/ Traffic yesterday evening

Lot No. 91. Houston.info - Sold for $17,000
Lot No. 175. Manhattan.info - Sold for $21,000

Don't forget about the ccTLDs that are being promoted deceptively:

.CC (Turks and Caicos)
.AM (Armenia)
.FM (Federated States of Micronesia)
.TV (Tuvalu)
.WS (Western Samoa)

travel.info has just sold @ sedo for $116,000

Lot No. 175. Manhattan.info - Sold for $21,000

Holy crap! When did this happen?!?! I sold that domain to someone 2 years ago for $3k!

Yikes! :(

Lot No. 175. Manhattan.info - Sold for $21,000
Holy crap! When did this happen?!?! I sold that domain to someone 2 years ago for $3k!

Yikes!:(

it seems to be an area which likes .info [I understand another .info "for the same are area" just sold for $70,000] perhaps its something to do with the high proflile & early adopter mta.info and it being in lots of people's minds?

fwiw, I just noticed that the current version (3.2) of the popular spamassassin spam filter has dropped the penalty on having a .info URL in the message body. Previous versions penalized such mails with about 1 point; the default threshold for a message to be labeled as spam is 5 points.

My .info site sends out about 50 ecards a day. I hope this means more will get through :)

And yes, I got the .info because .com and .net were no longer available.

hmmm..........
after going through all the posts here (and specially negative ones), I am increasing my bid for one of geographical .info names, to $ 1000 from $ 500.

after going through all the posts here (and specially negative ones), I am increasing my bid for one of geographical .info names, to $ 1000 from $ 500.

Why not? Imagine what a travel agency will pay for location.info if they specalize in that location?

Ladies and gents, when this thread popped up again today I thought "Hmmm . . this is getting a bit old . . and sometimes old threads are the fields that drive-by spammers like to plow and seed . . but. . since we don't do many in depth .info threads maybe the .info guys and gals deserve just a little more time in the sun . . "

But . . there's another way of looking at this . . just seeing it as an "old thread" and maybe it's time to move on . . and, well, sometimes you just gotta ask the crowd . . "Is that all you got?"

So, in my best of Dirty Harry voice, I gotta ask you all: Well, .info guys and gals, is it?

There's gotta be something else worthwhile talking about that involves .info, isn't there? For instance . . who wants to talk about sex?

Didn't I read about someone selling sex? What's all this talk about sex being sold for millions and now for hundreds of thousands of dollars? That must be some pretty good sex? Anyone have an sex.info about this latest big deal?

This thread is now locked and closed.

Thank you for your contributions.

[edited by: Webwork at 3:30 am (utc) on Aug. 16, 2007]