

Ask HN: What do you think of the new TLDs? (.sexy, .tips, .guru etc) - karangoeluw

What do you guys think? Do they have any future? Can general public adapt to typing JohnDoe.photos instead of the traditional .com&#x2F;.net&#x2F;.org etc?
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ChuckFrank
There's a major battle shaping up on TLDs like .health. The WHO wants it to be
used like .gov and .edu, and others want it to be freely available for things
like Snakeoil.health or Homeopathy.health. And this is the case for thousands
of TLDs

And yes, once the dust settles, the public will be willing to type in any one
of the thousands of new TLDs. The brokers are going to make their most money
off people having to protect this huge market for trademark issues. Disney
will have to buy every one. Disney.sexy, Disney.tips, Disney.guru, etc. etc.

(edit changed copyright to trademark.)

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gregimba
I think its going to be a big mess and the domain registrars are going to make
boatloads of money. I don't want to imagine the number of phishing sites that
are going to be made.

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rectangletangle
I think weird TLDs have already caught on. How many recent startups have there
been where their name is some strange combination of an abbreviated/misspelled
word, and an obscure TLD functioning as the word's suffix?

Names are a limited commodity, and short memorable names sell.

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downplay
And there are counter examples of this too. Del.icio.us, was just a damn
awkward domain name. So it morphed into delicious.com. I assumed we had Web
2.0 domain names like Flickr arrive as a result of most of the dictionary
being registered/parked. I.e. flicker.com. It had the added bonus of being
slightly different and memorable. Though I struggle a little with that domain
name because of the awkward non-standard spelling.

Prefixing with an i, is a sneaky namespace hack work around.

Then people jumped on alternate tlds, country coded tlds, from obscure and
war-torn countries. Again that opens up your options. For a time.

I'm increasingly coming around to just a boring old .com. Even the guardian
news outlet, moved from their .co.uk to .com recently.

Memorable is good, and short is easier to type.

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downplay
Slightly off-topic but what about the alternative of sub-domains?

For web sites I tend to use the www subdomain, because it offers convenience
and flexibility with CNAMEing, but I absolutely loathe the www subdomain.
Almost as much as 'com' as a tld. I assume com is an abbreviation of company.
Many websites aren't companies so that doesn't make much sense to me.

Despite my personal gripes, it's mainly aesthetics, and these fall into the
background, you fail to notice or care.

I rather a general identifier. Ambiguity isn't all that terrible: Apple
Records and Apple Computers. Coke the drink, the drug, the fuel etc.

A name by itself doesn't always mean that much without context.

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JacobAldridge
Less and less do I find myself typing in a URL, as opposed to clicking a link
(via a DDG search or in an email etc). So I think it's fair to make a
comparison to phone numbers - I know mine, my wife's, and the one I had as a
kid growing up. I couldn't tell you my new home phone number if my life
depended on it.

No doubt there will continue to be some confusion for a period (just ask the
owners of www.utube.com). But as a URL becomes a link, as opposed to a
discrete string of letters needing to be remembered, it will become less
important. Interestingly, this will obviously reduce the value of the TLDs and
specific URLs (though not entirely, because they will have some relevance to
SEO).

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karangoeluw
So domains don't matter anymore (or won't in foreseeable future)?

~~~
JacobAldridge
They will matter less - just like businesses used to pay a premium for a
"memorable" phone number. There will, for the foreseeable future, be benefits
- some memorability, especially while ".com" remains the "only" TLD for most
people, and also SEO benefits (I suspect example.com will rank higher than
example.tips, all other things being equal).

But over the next few years (and it may be 5-10), as people get used to a wide
variety of TLDs, I expect businesses to start taking advantage of the new real
estate.

I doubt many average consumers could explain the difference between
tips.example.com and example.tips, especially if it's a trusted link rather
than a URL on a tv advert. So Example LLC, faced with a 5-figure price to
secure their .com or a 2-3 figure price to secure a different TLD will surely
begin taking the lower cost option. And I suspect this will become a virtuous
cycle away from .com's ubiquity[1].

[1] The next question is why .biz etc didn't work. I would likely have made
this prediction ten years ago, and been wrong, though shrinking availability
of .coms makes it more likely now.

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spb
Seeing as how .info, .mobi, .aero etc. never took off, I don't think these new
TLDs are really likely to displace .com either. The thing about ".com" is
that, to the average person, .com is _the_ thing that makes a domain a domain,
like a file extension. They may also recognize .org and .net as other
extensions, like file formats. However, when you just start tacking on
arbitrary words with pre-existing connotations, the domain-recognizability of
them goes out the window: nobody would guess that "fast.bikes" is a domain
rather than just a tagline that uses dots instead of spaces.

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gesman
.anal is missing again!

