Thread: .xyz domain
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Old 15 Aug 2015, 09:03 PM   #2
Tsunami
The "e" in e-mail
 
Join Date: Jun 2004
Location: in between the bright lights and the far unlit unknown
Posts: 2,329
.xyz stands for what exactly? Probably there's not even a specific answer other than "the 3 last letters of the Latin alphabet". Hence, it sounds like a bit of a nonsensical extention to me. I don't know what price tag comes with such a domain, but I would probably only consider it if i were virtually free of charge. If I have to pay anyway to get a short URL, I prefer to stick with extentions that make sense.

I also fear that, regardless of number of new registrations, that it will take a while for people to memorise this new extention and get used to it. I can just picture a lot of people, because of habit, browsing to whatevername.com rather than whatevername.xyz . In mouth-to-mouth advertising you'd really have to emphasise on "it's .xyz, not .com or so, it's really .xyz" ; not very handy. It's like confrontating people with a product they totally don't know, and of which there is likely to be confusion when having to remember the name.

I must say too that I am sceptic towards all of those new extentions that have been released. I still have to see a first website advertising itself or a first event or product being promoted with one of those new extentions. Even those that make sense, like .art or .sports or so, I still haven't seen or heard any event or product using it to advertise their website. The only one I've seen being used so far is .brussels, and this is purely because I live in that city. I'm quite sure that even in the rest of Belgium few people know the extention .brussels exists. And even here inside the city, the extention is still virtually unused in comparison to local sites using either .be or one of the "classic" extentions (.com, .net, .org, .info, ...). I wouldn't even know where to register the .brussels domains, there's been virtually no advertising to us inhabitants that we suddenly have this local extentions as an option.

For all of those new extentions, it'll take long time for people to get used to it. People have been using .com, .net, .org + their own country domains for ages, and suddenly they would need to familiarise with a whole range of new extentions? I fear a lot of people won't see the forest from the trees anymore and I also expect a lot of sites with low traffic due to people remembering the name but not the extention and then mistakingly browsing to the .com version of the same name.

I don't think accepting all of those new domain extentions was a good idea at all. Even initiatives such as .tel, .name, and .biz have been relatively unsuccesful, and then ICANN and IANA just create more confusion by launching even more obscure extentions? I fear the only effect created will be the effect of confusion.

PS: isn't CentralNIC the same company that operates "domains" (de facto subdomains) of .uk.com, .us.com, .eu.com, .sa.com, .jpn.com, etc? Also experiments that have been used relatively few times...
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