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The Domain Blast

By Naseem Javed

Now you can buy any domain with any suffix. If a dotcom is gone, so what? For a cost, you can create your own suffix, any letters and any name.

Domain names are made of three parts. The www, the "name" and the suffix like .com. With ICANN's latest decision today, you now have full creative control over the last two parts. This is a revolutionary new concept creating a global scale boom in new names, massive confusion in duplication, global copycatting all compounded with cyber-squatting, where piles of popular names will be turned into pyramids of shared stupidity. The explosion of new names will eventually hit the fan, and the global entrepreneurial community in desperate need of making some mega online bucks will ride this flood by paying top dollar to have any desired name with an equally desired suffix to corner markets.

However, it's a great move that favors the global consumer. This move creates a new wave of interconnected global interactions and equally allows existing powerhouse name owners with a new set of strategies and angles to expand their global outreach by marking new territory.

With this new decision, big and small players will have their own suffixes like ibm.ibm, while others would create hotels.paris or play.casino all the way to sex.sex. Never in the history of business will a single decision create so much impact as this bold new policy by ICANN. Even when domain names were originally introduced, the adaptation process matured over a decade, and now everyone engaged in e-commerce has become so financially dependent on the structure of their domain names, the impact will be massive. Without a clear blueprint or a proper evaluation of their existing dotcom potential, a business can make huge blunders as sharks enter in protected waters. 

Copycats, by the millions, like the early dawn of e-commerce, tried to register at times the entire phonebooks and dictionaries in hopes of selling them to other bidders, most eventually got exhausted while some made huge killings.

Who are the winners and losers of this policy? At a time where old mediums and new ones are clashing head on, the GooHoo alliance of Google and Yahoo could wipe out old-fashioned advertising while search engines track our every move and predict every buying decision well in advance. This move sits very well for globally e-commerce driven models of the new world.

The winners of this move are the holders of creatively unique identities with solid Five Star Standard of naming, available on Internet, which are not only globally protected under trademark laws, but have also earned the recognition and respect of global customers. One-of-a-kind names like Sony, Microsoft, Rolex or Panasonic all have many new options opened up with additional control for global online marketing and image building.

The losers in case will be the remaining 90% majority of the global businesses that are somewhat chasing illusionary fame and are still convinced that their dysfunctional names are real winners, they believe that by hopping all over the world with new suffixes they will be able to push their names to the very top and they never will. Cyber identities such as dynamic .net dynamic .biz , dynamic .info or dynamic.dynamic could be of a single business empire, or many different ones.

The fact remains, it will never become an exclusive identity as long as it is grossly diluted. Today, 99% of businesses are in serious duplication or global language confusion mess. When the laws of corporate nomenclature are sacrificed over logo-based identity that creates a false illusion of fame, this disregard to the value of alpha-structure will now once again result in failure. Accidental naming covers 99% of businesses all over the world and this domain blast is a noisy wakeup call to big and small players of the world alike.

As predicted in 1998 in my book Domain Wars, global pressures will eventually force the opening of the Domain Registration to a free-for-all model. All these additional suffixes will now lead to billions of redundant domain names and a massive confusion that will stem from a booming domain name registration after markets. Trademark lawyers will also benefit greatly from this tidal wave while businesses on the other hand will be forced to acquire a sharper awareness of the complexity of naming and Five Star Ownership.

The internationalization of the net is also a good thing, and this policy accommodates billions of new players ready to join the race online. English domain names would eventually become dwarfed against the forces of Chinese and other foreign languages.

The new name-economy clearly predicts non-English based eCommerce powerhouses.

Never in corporate history has there been a time quite like this, where every corporate identity has been forced to take a pause with an urgent need to be evaluated on its message delivery mechanisms and qualities of its own name structures.

Names that exist simply for names sake have no place in this global arena. Either you have a 100% owned, proprietary stronghold on a name that can withstand the test of time, or you are out. Registering weak names in 100 different suffixes and 100 different countries is not the answer. Suddenly the struggle for visibility becomes number one challenge and it is the power of names that will now decide the ecommerce visibility.  It's either have a name mechanism in place be visible or just stay lost in oblivion.

The biggest losers at this junction are those large companies who have stubbornly avoided any CEO level discussions to evaluate their names and dysfunctional components.

They must now stop denials, bite the bullet and evaluate to re-emerge as brand new once and for all under a global, Five Star Name Identity solution. Simply put, lead or take cover under the domain blast.

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Naseem Javed, widely recognized an authority on global naming, author of Naming for Power, and also Domain Wars, founder of ABC Namebank, a 30 years old consultancy out of Toronto and New York. Naseem is on projects and lecture tours in Dubai and Asia. nj@njabc.com

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