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View Poll Results: Are you signing up for a .xyz domain?
Already got one - I lead whilst others follow! 0 0%
Heck, yeah - here's my money! 1 8.33%
No way, Jose! 11 91.67%
Voters: 12. You may not vote on this poll

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Old 15 Aug 2015, 06:05 PM   #1
FredOnline
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.xyz domain

http://www.irishtimes.com/business/t...roup-1.2316447

CentralNic said .xyz is the most popular new top level domain. In the 90 days to the end of last week, it had about 222,000 registrations – an average of 2,466 a day. After Google announced Alphabet, daily demand has tripled.

Anyone here on the forum jumping on this bandwagon?

Poll is quite simple, and is anonymous.
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Old 15 Aug 2015, 09:03 PM   #2
Tsunami
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.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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Old 16 Aug 2015, 01:15 AM   #3
David
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I contemplated on this some when I noticed that Namecheap were selling them for one Dollar (until September the 18th)

At the end of the day I decided against - another domain name (that I will likely never use) is not a lot of use.
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Old 19 Aug 2015, 05:52 AM   #4
Tsunami
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Of all the new email extentions launched, the only ones I'd see myself maybe use some day are .mail and .art . And even that is highly unsure, because for the website that I run to promote my artistic work I already have a .com domain. And for email I would say using one of my .com domains or an existing email provider using .com, .net or .be would be at least equally good as a .mail domain.
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Old 26 Aug 2015, 04:10 AM   #5
Tsunami
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Finally found out how to register .brussels domains. Despite living in the city, there's been almost no advertising going on about the launch of the city's own domain.

Where to register Brussels domains

bNamed.net, Gandi, United Domains do register it. No idea about the reliability of the others.
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Old 26 Aug 2015, 04:42 AM   #6
David
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.brussels domain name seems a trifle expensive, at first sight.
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Old 26 Aug 2015, 11:18 AM   #7
n5bb
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Does the average Internet user really care about the top level domain? It's rare for me to type in a domain name (or write it with a pen and paper), and this would be if I saw a URL printed on some document or sign (such as a poster or book jacket). People sending messages to Fastmail.fm addresses didn't think the recipients were in Federated States of Micronesia. The only .xyz URL I know of is abc.xyz (the new Alphabet, holding company of Google).

So I have nothing against. .xyz, but don't think it will be a big draw for most companies or organizations. It's just another change for domain resellers to make a buck.

Bill
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Old 26 Aug 2015, 06:34 PM   #8
Tsunami
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Quote:
Originally Posted by David View Post
.brussels domain name seems a trifle expensive, at first sight.
Not sure about pricing since this varies from registrar to registrar, but the cost for the registrars is higher for a .brussels domain name than for a .be domain name so logically I'd guess the customer will also pay more to register a .brussels domain name. Not sure exactly how much, probably depends on the registrar. I can add though that here in Brussels, .be is still a lot more widely used than .brussels ; I've only seen a 10 websites or so advertised with the .brussels extention.

Here for example the price is 37 €, which is about 4 to 5 times as much as the price for a .be in general: http://www.brusselsdomeinnaam.be/

To make it more complex, the city of Gent has its own .gent domain too, but unlike .brussels the registry is not the general registry that also runs the .BE extention: http://www.nic.gent/
Oddly enough, Name.com and eNom and EuroDNS offer this one as well, in addition to bNamed, Gandi, United-Domains, Not sure about pricing but again varies from registrar to registrar probably.

The whole range of new domains IMO leads to pointless complexity, more than it does anything good.
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Old 26 Aug 2015, 06:38 PM   #9
Tsunami
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Quote:
Originally Posted by n5bb View Post
Does the average Internet user really care about the top level domain? It's rare for me to type in a domain name (or write it with a pen and paper), and this would be if I saw a URL printed on some document or sign (such as a poster or book jacket). People sending messages to Fastmail.fm addresses didn't think the recipients were in Federated States of Micronesia. The only .xyz URL I know of is abc.xyz (the new Alphabet, holding company of Google).

So I have nothing against. .xyz, but don't think it will be a big draw for most companies or organizations. It's just another change for domain resellers to make a buck.

Bill
.abc would have made more sense (or at least less nonsensical) than .xyz I'd say.
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Old 28 Aug 2015, 08:58 PM   #10
kijinbear
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Tsunami View Post
.abc would have made more sense (or at least less nonsensical) than .xyz I'd say.
A TLD is meant to appear at the end of a domain name, not at the beginning. That might be the reasoning behind .xyz. For example, Google's new holding company uses abc.xyz, which looks somewhat less awkward to me than xyz.abc.
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Old 29 Aug 2015, 08:05 AM   #11
Tsunami
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Yes, but .abc would have been easier to remember. Anyways, the only domain of the new extentions I may consider at some point is .art ; I already have the .com version of the domain of my arts project, but to avoid confusion I may get the .art version too if not too expensive.

City domains such as .brussels, .gent, .amsterdam, .berlin, .nyc, etc may be useful to some extent but my immediate response is: why not use the country's ccTLD? That'd avoid confusion. Otherwise I see situations appear where people need to remember whatever-web-address-it-is.berlin but out of habit browse to whatever-web-address-it-is.de because they're used to the country domain already for so many years ...

But fair enough, I can somewhat see the point of those new domains, as I see some idea behind .mail , .sports , .church , .futbol , .shop ...
That however doesn't stop the fact that it will take a while before people get used to these new extentions, when they've been used to their ccTLD and the .com, .net etc for so many years.

And I am still wondering why we really need extentions such as .ninja, .pizza and similar oddities. If you run a pizza delivery shop, and you can already choose between .com, .net, .org, the ccTLD of your country (+ in some cases the city domain, for example .nyc or .amsterdam) ; do we really need a .pizza domain? If we need to create domains for every religion, every type of food, every city with >200000 citizens, every type of sport, ... then seeing the forest from the trees will become virtually impossible.
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Old 29 Aug 2015, 08:09 AM   #12
Tsunami
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Oh yes, the .xxx and .porn extentions would be handy IF and ONLY IF
a) all adult sites go into these extentions
b) adult sites using another extention are offered a free .xxx or .porn domain instead of continueing to operate the site under .com or the ccTLD

Both for people like me who want to avoid adult sites, as well as people who actually search them, the new extentions could be handy subject to existing adult sites all switching to their own purpose-specific extention.

Idem dito with gambling sites for example, create extentions such as .casino or .bet but also move existing gambling sites into those extentions.

Then block adult sites and gambling sites from using .com, .net, and the ccTLD's. Both for those wanting to find them and those wanting to avoid them, this would make things easy.
As long as such sites continue to operate under .com and the ccTLD's too, the new extentions are a bit pointless.

The new extentions could make the web more easily to navigate but in the current situation this isn't happening.

And I do fear the city-specific extentions will keep causing confusion since the country-specific extentions and generic domains such as .com will still remain king, it will take a long time before people realise those new extentions are out there up and running.
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Old 4 Oct 2015, 06:23 AM   #13
FredOnline
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Gandi Promo

If anyone's interested:

Five-dollar promotion on .xyz

I have no connection with Gandi, just a customer.
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Old 4 Oct 2015, 07:21 PM   #14
Tsunami
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Has the .art domain already been activated? Of all the novelty domains, that's the only extention I'd consider if the pricing isn't too high (I already own a .com name for my arts website)

I'm still not convinced of all these new extentions and would be curious to see some statistics on the number of active domains and the number of traffic of some of the recently launched extentions. I can see a step-by-step(!) potential for some of them, but I very much doubt the purpose of some others, like .ninja for example. And unless Google manages to promote .xyz in such way it becomes famous enough, I fear .xyz is one of the more nonsensical extentions amongst the new ones. I'd be curious for statistics on extentions such as .xxx, .post, .shop, .mail, .news, etc though as those have the potential if given enough time to grow.

Also, I'd be curious about statistics of the city domains. Here in Belgium, .brussels and .gent are the two cities that have seen their own extention created, but the overwhelming majority of local websites still uses either .com or .be (or sometimes even .eu, which grows in popularity). I've only seen a limited number of .brussels websites up and running (and many of them are ran by the city council or local government rather than citizens enthousiastically registering such domains) and very very few .gent domains up and running.
Maybe the likes of .nyc, .berlin, .london, ... have more potential but then they already have .com and .us/.de/.uk/.eu ... So the question still rises where's the added value and whether it won't create more confusion than anything else.
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Old 5 Oct 2015, 01:55 AM   #15
David
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Tsunami View Post
Has the .art domain already been activated? Of all the novelty domains, that's the only extention I'd consider if the pricing isn't too high (I already own a .com name for my arts website)
No: it seems that there is fighting going on, regarding who gets the rights to manage it. I am looking to register a .art domain name myself.
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