Many people like to make their opinions known when it comes to domaining. Some attach their name to it and can provide hard data on what they have done and why they see things the way they do.
Others speak anonymously from behind a keyboard with just a username and avatar. Most don’t provide any hard data on what they have done.
As we enter a new decade we now have an adequate sample size of comments and commenters.
In this article we take a look at 5 prognostications that have not aged well.
Frank Schilling 2013 – Speaking at The Digital Marketing & gTLD Strategy Congress conference. “.Com will become like AM radio” Safe to say .Com is SiriusXM the radio people are willing to pay for.
Andrew Knibbe 2011 – In a guest post on JohnChow.com. “Domain investing party is officially over”. The party is from over and Mr. Knibbe is now Head of Product at @seekjobs.
Evan Williams 2011 – One of the founders of Twitter wrote a post back in 2011, 5 reasons domains are less important. Evan must have had second thoughts as he deleted the post years later.
Fred Krueger 2014 – At NamesCon the Minds + Machines executive said Com would be dead in 10 years. In 2015 Mr.Krueger left the company to focus on Mozart , a website building, hosting and management service he founded. Mozart is currently listed for sale by the registry as I believe they repossessed the domain name when it expired.
Lou Kerner 2000 – The former Goldman Sachs analyst and IdeaLab CEO said this about .tv, “I thought from the start that .tv could be bigger than .com.” I have probably written more about the .tv extension than anyone else on the planet. I wish it were true, but it certainly is not remotely true.
Hope you enjoyed the trip back through memory lane.
Wonderful article, enjoyed it very much.
I think that’s why Frank is getting out, he has lost a lot of credibility out there except for the fanbois who want to blow him.
I heard nothing about or from in 18 months, except for the divorce and then the sale. You can’t say .com is am radio, you just can’t.
Most are laughably wrong, but this one I don’t think it wrong at all,
“Evan Williams 2011 – One of the founders of Twitter wrote a post back in 2011, 5 reasons domains are less important. Evan must have had second thoughts as he deleted the post years later.”
Domains are definitely less important and Google is the biggest factor in that. Many companies web presence now is a mix of website/social media/apps. The rise of Google search and the EMD update has diluted the importance of having a good domain, especially for keyword domains.
When the domain industry people read those comments they often seem to read it as “this guy is say domains aren’t important”. Nope he is saying they are “less” important and a big chunk of people outside the domain industry would agree with him.
Some domains are less important now while other domains are more important then they used to be.
There is just less gray/grey area now.
Ray What a great article.You nailed in 1000 words but I can understand how much you had to research to write this.
You should never bet against the market (.COM)
Well GD is paying a lot of green bills for the 350.000 AM .com’s
but didn’t want any of the FM GTLD’s
That portfolio is an amazing piece of ART and years of dedication and hard work by FS
No portfolio will ever be put together like this one.
Great example & inspiration……… Wish him the best DR
Get your facts straight. GD stopped selling those very nTLD because frank SCREWED investors with 1000% price hikes while he lied, saying he wouldn’t all along.
GD STOPPED selling those spoiled rotten ntlds of his!
Frank is the one to blame for that, not nTLD in general. He is a big reason nTLD have problems now. suppose to be an ambassador. He ain’t no domainer, SCREWING actual domain investors at the most OPPORTUNE time for him. What a slimeball IMO.
I’d like to see you .com guys manage a profile then suddenly see $500 renewals each. SEE how happy you are then! Yet you praise the man. HYPOCRITES.
Nobody knows anything about the future.
Talk is cheap.Once spoken,people hold you accountable.They say one thing in the open and do another thing behind the scene.
Frank was saying .com was AM while peddling his gtld’s and spending all of his surplus back into buying .com’s at Namejet and Godaddy, etc