This weeks interesting domain related links – w/e 13th October

I thought I would take a little time to share with you some to the most interesting, thought provoking domaining links from the past week.

Perhaps a good place is to start with the planned sale of WallStreet.com at Moniker.com’s live and silent auction this week at the T.R.A.F.F.I.C. East event, in Miami, Florida, USA. According to this article from Bloomberg.com about the sale WallStreet.com domain name the expected sales estimate is impressive – between $4 million and $5 million US dollars. The most interesting thing is the inclusion of a quote from David Cart, an analyst from Jupiter Research in New York, who said,

“Domain names are not that important anymore…..seven or 10 years ago, it made a difference. Nowadays, because search engines are so good, it’s not nearly as important.”

This is contradicted by research undertaken in January 2007 by the Internet Commerce Association on Traffic Trends in the Direct Search Industry (.pdf report).

In my opinion, we are in the middle of an internet revolution and the .com domain name extension is one of the worlds most internationally recognised brands. Domain names are always going to be vital to any business seeking website traffic. The more memorable, and the more relevant to the business or individual, a domain name is, the better.

Someone who thinks direct navigation using domain names is very important is Brian Provost, CEO of Scoreboard Media Group who shares with us 10 lessons he learned since starting in Domaining, and it is all quality material. Brian’s lesson number 5 is that all the best domains are NOT taken, just harder to find, perhaps. An interesting source of ideas for potential domain names is also included, so is well worth reading, as I have said. 

This brings me to another internet gem. Lots of people are looking at emerging trends and technology and trying to puzzle out what may become the premium domains of the future. PredictiveDomaining.com is a great source of links/ information about spotting social/ technology trends and products and grabbing the domain names that describe them.

Finally, continuing on the theme of emerging trends, we turn to emerging domain name extensions as the .Asia domain extension entered the ‘Sunrise’ period in October. I agree with those who argue that continental domains are a waste of time. I can assure non-european domainers that the .eu extension is never used here in the UK. I can’t remeber ever seeing .eu being used for a website (and I do take an interest in things like that!) and I predict that .Asia will be widely ignored. I will definitely be avoiding this extension!