Thursday, January 16, 2014

Are personal domains the greatest chance for the new gTLDs?

(And the most underestimated opportunity?)

It seems that majority of the new gTLD applicants are focusing on businesses. The end users, who could register personal domains, are IMHO, also very important target group.

How I would define a good personal domain? Simply: a personal domain is that one you could use in an e-mail address that you put on your C.V.

I was surprised that I found quite few of them that I would call "typical" personal domain extensions: .mail, .latino, .kiwi, .scot, .irish, .arab, .gal, .tatar and .blog. Well, there is a lot of geographical domain extensionss such as .nyc or .berlin that are also a good choice, but they aren't typical "personal identity" domains, because a person can move to a different location.

So, why the personal domains are the biggest chance for the new gTLDs?

The simplest answer

There are more individuals than companies in the world.

Unconventionality isn’t such a big problem

Many startup founders may still wonder if it is not still better to have a .com, they are just afraid that their customers will look for .com first. That may not necessarily apply for a personal domain. If one creates an e-mail, not everyone plans to operate a billion dollar business on it (as many startupists do). So people aren't too concerned to have the unambiguous .com. On the other hand, they still may want their addresses to look good, which is exactly what the new gTLDs can offer.

Imagine, if you are a blogger, wouldn't it be better to have smith.blog than, for example, johnsmiththewritter.com?

Google may help

Even Google, with it's Google apps and Gmail, seems not to focus on end-users enough. From tens of their gTLDs, there is handful of such domains. Those are .family, .wow, .dad, .you, .free, .baby, .fun, .wow and the already mentioned .mail, though I can imagine maybe two of them could be used on the resume :-)

It seems Google applied for them to offer them to their paying Google apps users. When it will mean couple of clicks to own an e-mail address like john@smith.mail, with no need to configure the DNS which is a huge problem for most BFUs, while knowing that they own the domain and could move their mailbox elsewhere, then probably much more people will take advantage of it. (I hope Google won't be the only registrar). Just that could be enough to raise awareness or even to start a personal domains hype.

Recent development

The recent development on the internet is a chance for new gTLD marketers: They could point out that:
  • There were blogging services such as posterous.com that were discontinued. People who put a lot of efforts to get audience on their blogs, lost a lot of value of their work. If they had their blogs on own domains, they wouldn't have problems.
  • NSA affairs: If you have an e-mail and realize it is monitored by someone, you can move to anywhere else without changing the address.

So, what you think?

I would like to ask you:
  • Do you agree that the personal domains are the biggest chance for the new gTLDs?
  • Do you agree there are not as much personal gTLDs, as it should be?
  • Do you know any other that could you use as personal ones?
  • Which personal domain extensions do you miss? (I mean, do you have any ideas for such gTLDs?)
Discuss bellow or tweet to @JungleNavigator