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debate .NET is a side chick domain extension...

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Yeah you heard me right.

I wan't to see the domain industry flourish so i don't always voice my opinions if it's not for something but i think healthy discussions can be beneficial, even for me. I'm always learning.

The other day while networking, a young lady told me she wanted to buy her own birth name but a company owned it and was asking about $700 for it. The first company came to mind was buydomains.com and after researching it I was right. Luckily for her they dropped it and she was finally able to take ownership. Anyway that's not the point of this thread.

What she said next was what I kept saying over and over. She said(to paraphrase), "People keep bringing up .net but I just can't settle for that, i want a dotcom" And she was just upset someone would take her name. The young man next to her agreed and said: " what's that anyways(speaking of .net)" and said "I would even take a .org because it is established for organization" And these are everyday people who are not domainers or anything connected. Just people who would start blogs or startups.

What they said was exactly my thoughts. .NET is nothing more than a side chick and your real woman or man is a .COM. Some domainers like to back it up but I'm calling it out. Before you back it up: show me your .net business site?
Yeah I thought so. You don't even believe in it to use it for your main brand or site. The real reason you back it up is because you own a couple liquid .nets that can be traded between domainers.

The next argument is ohh, but .net is old and has more registrations than .org etc.. so that makes it second.. The truth is even a .org is more established because everyone even non domainers know what it's for. The real grade we should use to determine what is second to .com is not registrations but how many sites are built in proportion to registered domains. That will tell you the real truth.. Apart from media.net(when i was searching hard to find an alternative to adsense), It's been over a year since i have ran into a .net website/legitimate business?

I have even seen .com and .net available but .org registered? That baffled me..That say's even .org is more solid for someone to not care about the .com. But that's a side observation. I own a dotnet and I'm not saying you wont sell if you own a dotnet.. It's just very overrated. I guarantee if you go to your non domainer friends or people in the street and ask them what domain extansion they would choose for their business, I guanrantee they would almost all say .com or.org. I only see .net as an internal trading domain ext.. like maybe a lll.net etc..

Honestly, the chinese will have to rescue this extention and give it some life...yes buy the chips. But even that is just internal trading..The chinese have had .net landing pages with nothing on them since the dawn of .net.

This is not an attack just my honest opinion that .NET is side chick.. And that's a compliment, because atleast people use side chicks... ohhhhhhh
 
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The views expressed on this page by users and staff are their own, not those of NamePros.
That is why I have 1900+ .orgs and 5-6 .nets

For business, I'd rather start it at word+net.com than word.net, unless it is super premiums like brand, media, loan, booking, travel, domain, date etc.
 
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I think peoples perception of extensions will evolve. .NET will be desirable for what it was intended. Your example is skewed because 'family name' has nothing to do with network. .COM may very well be the most desirable extension for family name in the future too, that's a tough example to analyze. I am of the thinking that night.club is better than nightclub.com. This has been discussed over and over though.

Edit: you want to see good use of a .net? Blizzard entertainment, very popular game company has used battle.net for a very long time, and they are hugely successful. battlenet.com is an epic fail compared to battle.net (for the poster above me). Granted they own www.blizzard.com too, but battle.net is their bread and butter, believe it.
 
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I have sold .COM domains when the .Net was available for reg fee. At one point years ago I had hundreds of .Net domains as good .COMs were so hard to acquire. With the brandables I had I would frequently register the .Net so that a business could not just pick up the alternative for reg fee. But I can only recall one occasion where the .COM buyer also wanted the .Net. There have been occasional low $XXX .Net sales and even a few higher than that. I have dropped 75% of the .Net domains I once had and may still drop a few more in the next year - they rarely sell. But if an extension which has existed for thirty years and has more registrations than any other TLD except .COM has only marginal value then why is there such a frenzy over all these new extensions?
 
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Original intention was that .net would be for internet related services, ISPs, hosting etc.

For purely that sense of it, only handful of companies would be a good fit. For anything else, all the rest companies are also on the internet and even ISPs, hosting providers etc. have their main site on .com, even if they bothered to reg .net

So, .net was created for a narrower niche within .com and the borders got washed out. On the other hand, .org has a very clearly defined and distinct funtion. It stands for non-profit, humanistic, charity, cause etc. And that is why many organizations/people register .org without even bothering to check for .com or they just forward .com to .org

That is why wikipedia.com forwards to wikipedia.org and not vice versa. And Zuckerberg acquired internet.org and not some fancy .com for his cause about bringing internet to every remote place on the Earth.
 
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I think .net will be more valued in future when all good and solid .com will be taken. For example, some company start to write some articles about fitness and FitnessMagazine.com is too expensive, they will buy FitnessMagazine.net. And if Im right .org is for non profit organizations so what about profit organizations, will they bought . org instead of .net?
 
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I think .net will be more valued in future when all good and solid .com will be taken. For example, some company start to write some articles about fitness and FitnessMagazine.com is too expensive, they will buy FitnessMagazine.net. And if Im right .org is for non profit organizations so what about profit organizations, will they bought . org instead of .net?

Fitnessmagazine doesn't fit with net, that is a bad domain. .NET is a small niche, like recons said. It's tough. Fitness.online, Fitness.news...that's where you'd want to invest.
 
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@JayT, If I were to invest heavily in an online Fitness Magazine, and FitnessMagazine.com, FitnessMag.com were not available, I would use Fitness.Online or Fitness.News ONLY IF I also had FitnessOnline.com and FitnessNews.com
 
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Fitness.news reg fee is 60,000$ so if revenue is also that high thats too expensive
 
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Correction: provided that the renewal fees are comparable to .com renewals. Otherwise, I would create a new brand with Fitness+Keyword or Keyword+Fitness or just come up with a dictionary word that is related to Fitness.
 
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@JayT, If I were to invest heavily in an online Fitness Magazine, and FitnessMagazine.com, FitnessMag.com were not available, I would use Fitness.Online or Fitness.News ONLY IF I also had FitnessOnline.com and FitnessNews.com
Most would agree with you for the time being. I don't. I think fitness.online is better. I also believe that sentiment will shift to my perspective in time. I think that with the type of thinking you have, you'll be left holding the bag on those .COM investments. It is not so simple that I can say all .COM is bad (some will be still be very good investments). To put this simply, any word or phrase that can be utilized better in other extensions will take MOST of the value from the 2nd rate .coms, exactly like your example, fitnessmagazine.com. Fitness.com will always be great, but any 2nd rate words (again, fitnessmagazine) or phrases will lose their value when the word/phrase can be smartly utilized in other extensions.

poster above: "Fitness.news reg fee is 60,000$ so if revenue is also that high thats too expensive" - I agree, that is not sustainable. Fitness just happened to be the topic and I am speaking in general. There are plenty of other opportunities.

I am not contradicting myself either. You might think 'he said night.club is better than nightclub.com, but now he's saying fitness.com is better than fitness.online'. Keep in mind, night.club a totally different thing, it is a domain hack as well...everything is not so straight forward, they're are always dynamics at play.

PS: I should be taking your money for advice like this :P
 
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So basically .net's are not as popular as .com's.

Not exactly breaking news.
 
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What percentage of yesterday's Super Bowl ads highlighted any extension other than .COM?

I saw a .Org and someone pointed out a .Movie which was so small it wasn't even noticeable. Dozens of ads and hundreds of possible extensions but most ads if they even mentioned a domain were using .COM.

I do believe there can be some value in other TLDs but saying that two-word .COMs are going to become worthless because of new TLDs is a stretch. It is more likely that portfolios full of new TLDs will be dropping them in mass over the next several years as there will be too few buyers to pay renewals.
 
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What percentage of yesterday's Super Bowl ads highlighted any extension other than .COM?

I saw a .Org and someone pointed out a .Movie which was so small it wasn't even noticeable. Dozens of ads and hundreds of possible extensions but most ads if they even mentioned a domain were using .COM.

I do believe there can be some value in other TLDs but saying that two-word .COMs are going to become worthless because of new TLDs is a stretch. It is more likely that portfolios full of new TLDs will be dropping them in mass over the next several years as there will be too few buyers to pay renewals.

As for the superbowl ads, like I've been saying, current sentiment will shift. Some companies won't re-brand with new tlds. Some will, even some biggest ones. Some might just buy the premium words in whatever .extension to hold back competition. Many will even begin promoting NEW TLD in a big way, but use forward their old .com as to not lose established traffic. .COM lovers will tout that forward as a .com superiority too. But look...if they're advertising a new TLD, which is superior in their mind? The new, sensible TLD is what is superior because it will bring more new traffic. New startups will look for the new TLD too, obviously.

RIght now, think gtlds of a mustard seed just beginning to sprout.

Agree, many tld regs are garbage and will drop.
 
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Well .net makes sense for battle.net but I think .net will be use mostly asian companies in a near future just like .biz.
 
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I'm probably going to get busted by the forum sheriff for saying this, but there's a link in my signature to a place where you could learn a lot about how .nets are doing on the market right now.
 
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Yeah you heard me right.
This is not an attack just my honest opinion that .NET is side chick.. And that's a compliment, because atleast people use side chicks... ohhhhhhh

Dude, there are tasteful ways of trolling a forum, and there are not-so tasteful ways of trolling a forum. Your way was not-so tasteful.

You directly offended approximately half the audience by being chauvenist. You indirectly offended a good many more of the audience who were offended on behalf of the women you offended.

And in this blatant and repeated act of chauvenism, all you did was rant out your opinion. It was nothing more than your opinion.

Now all the people here think you're a douche. Now you're going to have to create a new account and come back and try again, and never let anyone find out about your old account.

And in the future, when you feel the need to go an a dumb rant like that, grab a hammer and smash your fingers.

Please sir, just set the keyboard down, nice and slow. Good. Now step away from it nice and slow. Good. Now prepare to be tasered!
 
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The sentiment shift for .otherstuff would still appear to be far off and it is strictly reliant on really important .otherstuff sites cropping up and being successful.

I admit that I thought "well maybe..." And then my 6 and 7 year old started to referring as everything .com because that's what they've already come to know. Amazon.com, Roblox.com, minecraft.com, Facebook.com, abcmouse.com, YouTube.com, codecombat.com, Google.com, and on and on. Though I'll say the one outlier is Code.org.

For there to be a shift, *something* has to happen and the fact is, it doesn't look like anyone is planning to actually invest (i.e. putting many worthwhile / successful brands on .others) to make it happen.
 
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Still, there is a side chick that we domainers love to visit again and again: expireddomains.net
 
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All this endless discussion about which is .com / .net / .org or gtld etc..
Domain world has changed now.. after gTLDs release in last years and Chinese domain rush on every extension. Ordinary people are not aware of gTLDs they will say .com. But this will eventually change.
And of course .com is a king as it has 120M registration. However, future will be different. People will start seeing all other extension websites.
And ohh yeah .com will stay as king, but if they can afford to pay the price of king. They will get .com otherwise it will also be cool to have some other extensions to have your website.
 
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all you did was rant out your opinion. It was nothing more than your opinion.
Oh man
Oh man, oh man
Not again
Yeah, I learned the game from namepros, you can never check me
Back to back for greggb that didn't get the message
Dude, I guess you missed the part where I said it's just my opinion.
Anyway, to be a little nicer and not ruffle any feathers,
I just went ahead and "hand-registered", sidechick.net ohhhhhh...
I got the drink in me goin' back to back
Yeah, goin' back to back
I got the drink in me goin' back to back
Yeah, I'm goin' back to back
I don't wanna hear about this ever again..

#sidechicks
 
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So basically .net's are not as popular as .com's.

Not exactly breaking news.
You missed the news... It's not as popular as .org either... Catch it in the morning paper..ohhhhhh
 
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I'm probably going to get busted by the forum sheriff for saying this, but there's a link in my signature to a place where you could learn a lot about how .nets are doing on the market right now.
Hands Up! Don't move! Anything you say or do will be used against you and your sidechicks...B-)
 
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