.CO is coming - Expect huge prices and an intense aftermarket - finally real competition to .com
June 14, 2009 by Rick Latona
At long last, the nation of Colombia is going to turn their coveted ccTLD extension “.co” into a business.
I’ve received word that on the 23rd of June the country will be accepting a bid. My source tells me that Verisign, Straat Investments, Affilias, Argus, and Technology Services (GTS), among others, have all expressed interest in and most likely placed bids to be the administrator of the extension.
The .co extension will be a major hit. Not only will the names get snatched up by domainers due to their similarity to .com names and other names that use .co like .co.uk (United Kingdom) but if marketed properly, end-users will also want the names.
After all, .com means (commercial) where .co traditionally means (company). In many ways, .co makes more sense than .com for a company’s domain.
I’m not saying that .co is an immediate threat to .com. Please don’t blow out of proportion my comments. I’m just saying it is the biggest threat. I can’t think of any other extension which would have the same potential.
If I was a gambling man - which I am from time to time - I’d place my bet on VeriSign walking away with the prize. I can’t imagine there being a price tag too big for them to pay to control the extension which poses the biggest threat to their core business.
why dont you go after it.
or is it tooo expensive. Cheers.
Nice Post !
I think it will be a very very nice extension…
For sure I will buy a .co domain name and will get Miss Columbia for free with it.
A new product needs to be promoted !
And I think that .co will be rather used similar to .cm than to .com TLD. I see usage of .co ccTLD as a typo of .com and ccTLD for Columbia but not as a competitor to .com extension. There is to much temptation to add “m” after .co and it will be hard to change people habits
But it will be interesting to see development of this domain name. Personally I am not going to buy (m)any .co domain names..
It’s Colombia, not “Columbia” ;-D
.Co is definitely threat to .Com and it will dilute .com supremacy up to some extent.
As Daniel pointed out, people are used to typing .com - if you see http://www.example.co as a link, you’re probably going to think it is a typo. I think this will only serve to strengthen .com as many people will mistype .co as .com. This is another extension that is only good for getting some typo traffic the same as .cm and .om. Maybe 5 years after the release people will recognise it as an extension, but maybe 5 years after the release we’ll all be dead.
Now it .com will get competition really. And sure I will register a .co domain for me.
Well said Finbarr, but having said that I think I’ll register a few. You never know.
I agree that .co will be just another typo, it was the same with .cm, most of the traffic comes from people who simply misspelled .com
We never know how things will be, but i won’t put my money on .co, i think the domain business has seen so many new next big mega success fantastic thing, and it’s always a flop.
.Com and some good ccTLD’s are, and will keep being a solid investment for many years to come, the rest is speculation.
Great need more competion!
PeopleSearches.com
.co is a common typo for .com. The proof is in the pudding, so to speak. Several years ago, Kevin ham grabbed control of .cm, and he’s made millions with it.
Most of my 9000 .com domains only get a few visits a day, so I think something like this will only help me in the short term, because it will generate some typo traffic to my domains.
The .co or .cm will not be as effective compare to .com. First of all web filtering tool like opendns.com redirect typo to .com version. I’m using opendns.com in our network, if a type http://www.randompage.cm it goes automatically to .com website.
Read the article here: http://sm.tv/2z
Regards,
EM
Interesting posts, all of them. I know that many see .com as meaning (commercial) however, to me it speaks more loudly as (communications), such as internet communications, commerce, etc. I believe it may have something to do with its strength in some unconsciously small measure too.
I agree it is the closest thing to .com, but it is not .com… yet anyway. Which brings me to this: has anyone ever typed a domain and forgot to add the extension? I’d love to see the rise of the non-extension! (or am I dreaming?)
Cheers,
- SI
Mr. Javier Zaffaroni, thank you for your correction of my mistake with writing
Colombia.
The reason for this mistake was, that I was completely shocked because of
the beauty of the Colombian girls in the picture on this website.
I have 12,000 .coms bigdeal .co .cm whatever. If the economy is down the advertisers don’t by ads.
[...] and is Rick Latona off his rocker ? .CO is coming - Expect huge prices and an intense aftermarket - finally real competition to .com | R… I love Rick … I don’t know what to make of his statement that it may present the biggest future [...]
I personally don’t think it will be any more successful than the .me, which is to say limited. The primary challengers to .com have already happened; .co.uk and .de, that’s it.
There are still far too many undeveloped premium .coms for it to be truly tested by another extension. Example; why would the public consider using cowboys.co when cowboys.com is a search box? (no offense to the owners).
Only when domainers and/or endusers finally, finally start developing ALL the premium .com domains instead of recycling them, the general public (internationally speaking) will develop an appetite for alternative extensions even if they are not a native of that country.
Now, the Miss Colombia pageant, on the other hand, is certifiably, undeniably an international hit as far as I am concerned :D.
com is kind , maybe co will be the prince?
Wow! Forget the names, look at the girls!!!!!!!
If they were all like that they could take over as Colombia’s biggest export
If I ever get divorced, I know where I’m heading for a replacement….
It’ll depend on the pricing naturally, but I can’t think of any other extension that can provide the .com typo and “company impression” just to name a few. Hate to say the rest have fallen short of “dot com” in the big picture, but they have. There’s millions of good folks using a whole bunch of other extensions for “best and highest” use, and that’s all good - but specifically compared against dot com in the big picture they have all fallen short.
Gonna’ keep an eye on this one. I guess time will tell if they play it right… There’s been so many errors and misplays with others that have tried to unseat dot com - it’ll be amusing to watch one challenge, or burnout like many before.
L2
*
The difficulty I see with ccTLDs: The search engines tend to rank ccTLDs high in the country of origin, so all those .co domains will rank high in Colombia, but will likely bomb in, say, the US and other countries.
I saw this happen with .me and .tv.
However, for direct navigation purposes, perhaps .co will give .com some healthy competition.
Never say never (as they say).
*
.co will take long to be avaliable. And it’s probably going to be the best CCTLD, but never close to .com or even .net
Are you serious?
You seriously think that .co is a “threat” in any way to .com?
After the initial landrush is over, the typos are acquired and the keywords are snapped up, you seriously think that a business is going to risk building a product on a platform that is a knock-off of the standard?
“Yeah, MyBusiness.co… That’s d-o-t -c-o, like the abbreviation for “company”, not d-o-t c-o-m…”
I think Id rather have a .biz.
This reminds me of my childhood, collecting baseball cards. The baseball card mania got so heated that the industry was creating and promoting endless streams of new product, collectors were paying prices totally disconnected from reality and there were more trade shows than people really wanted… I’m starting to see the same things again, in domaining. I guess all manias behave similarly. Just because domains have a bright future and may be undervalued relative to a huge arc of time doesn’t mean that here, now, people aren’t getting stupid about them.
.co will simply be a defensive domain for existing .com web properties.
It will do nothing to compete with the standard.