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.NAME at a Crossroads
An anonymous reader writes "It seems the .NAME registry is at a
crossroads. They say that things are going far
from well, and so they have started their own registrar that is going to try to
market .NAME domains to individuals, unlike all other registrars. If they
don't manage, this will be the first gTLD to go bankrupt. I guess that
will put a damper on any plans to introduce more new TLDs."
I've never taken my .name domain just because they don't sell directly to individuals. But now, I have a chanche. I think that's a good idea, but the news should be promoted *alot* .
I was there.
Dang, I've never even *heard* of
Well shucks, I just can't figure out what the problem is...
Seriously, does anybody here actually have a .name TLD for their website? More specifically, do you have a .name without the corresponding .net, .com, or .org?
http://whats.my.name/bitch or http://say.my.name/bitch
My name has already gone so I couldn't have it even if I wanted it. There is no point having a variation of it either. I can't imagine how they expect this to succeed. There are far too many people with the same names, You need a proper hierarchy for this kind of thing.
Sig is taking a break!
.bankrupt
nuff said
I guess .net and .org are ok too but only if you also have the corresponding .com.
If you get anything other than a .com then everytime people try to go to your website they are going to type it in wrong until they remember your strange extension.
Either that or I don't understand. (It works out the same for me in the end).
.name, just for kicks, I entered Z for my First name, and Gringo for my last name, and I was provided with the very helpful message:
.name addresses
.name. I would want zGringo.name
.name.
I went to register my
Your own, impressive
z@gringo.name; and
www.z.gringo.name
may be available right now.
Which isn't really what I would want at all, IF I did want a
Their version of "whois" isn't really what I'm used to.. Maybe that's the way it's supposed to work, but then, that also probably what I'm not really interested in a
And, what's up with their response: www.z.gringo.name
may be available right now?? Is it available or not? It was a yes or no question..
argh..
-- -- Warning. Do not stare directly at the sun.
TLDs should be available to anyone who can run a secure, reliable root - this connects profit to performance, so we don't have to rely on the innate goodness of the root nameserver operators. The first thing that'd happen would be that pepsi.com, pepsi.net, and pepsi.org would be obsolete since
With the widespread popularity of search engines, nobody would have any trouble finding anything even if some temporary chaos were engendered.
Spare me the FUD about nameservices not scaling for this; I believe DNS and BIND are quite capable of it.
No one seem to have registered Anonymous Coward, even though Slashdots seems to be full of people with this name. How is this possible? You would think that at least one of these several hundred Cowards would register with their name. Things must be going really bad for .name...
I demand the Cone of Silence!
Well, it does not surprise me... having a own domain is cool, I know. But john.doe.name just sounds stupid. And the more common names should be taken allready anyway. How they they handle that? john.smith294.name? Definitly uncool:-(
The registrar claims it is for indivuduals to register their name. I just tried "www.john.smith.name" und ended at www.smith.com, some company website. Doesen't that spoil the purpose?
Finally the website of that registrar claims that john smith "may be available right now." It's not, or it wouldn't redirect me to that company website. Why doesen't the registrar say so? What good is that query field if it cannot even figure out names that even my DNS server knows to be taken?
Now instead of this ridiculous ".name" they should have introduced ".sex" and forced all those sex-companies into that TLD. That could have helped parents to make sure their children do not get exposed to lots of the smut on the net and I'd be happy with just blocking all mails from "*.sex" and have way less spam in my inbox. Of course that wouldn't have worked out completly -- someone is bound to try to offer adult content under other TLDs -- but I'm sure it would have helped.
Regards, Tobias
Next they will try a TLD with umlauts and maybe some of the cyrilic letters.
Until this article I had never even heard of a
Also, once I get this TLD I need to do something with it. After I pay for hosting or a mail server setup (which is what most people woudl probably want a
CAn'T CompreHend SARcaSm?
I think this post summarizes the outstanding problems well.
.NAME is a TLD targetted for individuals, but priced for organizations, even if .NAME DNS requests should be far less common than .COM lookups.
.NAME in your e-mail let spammers easily detect individuals, merely by looking in a phone book and putting an @ between the forename and surname, and finally applying .NAME.
Two points from that post:
-
-
Beware: In C++, your friends can see your privates!
It looks like they left off a reason why sales are slow: because it's a stupid idea!
How many people really want a personalized email domain that maps directly to your real name, cannot be changed and therefore says "HEY, SPAMMERS, I'M OVER HERE AND I DON'T GET ENOUGH CRAP IN MY EMAIL!!!!!"
I don't know what bothers me more - that they thought it was a good idea to begin with or that they think it just isn't being marketed well enough.
BTW, I *fully* expect that before they cash out and go home, we'll hear that they tried to market their customer database to spammers, not realizing that a 1 line perl script could generate a list of valid addresses of the form 'john@smith.name'.
What a bunch of maroons!
"Lawyers are for sucks."
- Doug McKenzie
the.site.with.no.name - be a good Spagetti Western homage site.
theyve.given.me.a.number.and.taken.away.my.name - The Prisoner and Secret Agent Man homage site.
went.through.the.desert.on.a.horse.with.no.name - fan site for the band America.
a.policeman.knew.my.name - Site for The Who.
www.eFax.com are spammers
There are no tiger attacks in my area and it's all because this rock I'm holding keeps the tigers away.
The price NetSol charges, like with anything else, is outrageous, but that's not the worst of it. When I tried to have the domain transferred to Go Daddy (much, much cheaper), I found that I can't! In fact, what I believe happens is that once you apply for your .NAME domain (i.e., john.smith.name), NetSol takes ownership of "smith.name", and you're given the right to use the "john" subdomain -- it can't be transferred! (or, at least, they're not allowing it)
NetSol also makes you purchase email hosting with the domain, and tries to tack on some web hosting. Simply put, DO NOT go through NetSol for this service. (I can hear the collective, "Well DUH!" now)
This is why I'm letting my .NAME domain dry up and die, and will continue to handle my email the way I always have. There's no way in hell I'm paying NetSol's outrageous prices until I'm able to transfer to some other registry.
Trolls lurk everywhere. Mod them down.
...and I will be very unhappy if it disappear. .name suits me very well.
.com domain my personal data will be reavealed in Whois database, so I don't care if my name is put in e-mail itself or not.
.museum, .coop or .aero domain?
First of all, I want my own domain and since I am not an ORGanization, not a COMmercial business, not a NETwork backbone
I use it since beginning and I receive very little spam (while I post to USENET without even spamblocking my e-mail).
If I would buy
And finally now I can switch from different ISP without changing subscription addresses, my Bussiness Cards, and sending e-mail to all my friends about new e-mail.
I can agree with one thing, it is not properly advertised. But did you hear about
Note: English is not my native language, so please disregard any spelling or grammar mistakes.
When in doubt, go to the library. - Ron Weasley in Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets
The problem is the spam. Very few people want to have their cyber identity tied to their email address in such a direct fashion.
The .name zone has about 10,000 Web pages in it. So you can work out the number of domains they have probably sold.
The big problem that the new registries face is that they thought that starting a new domain was a license to print money for doing nothing. They simply did not expect that there might be some actual work involved.
$35 sounds a lot by geek consumer standards, but you need a minimum of 2,000 names to cover the cost of hiring one person at that price - including salary, overhead, benefits etc. You need a minimum of 5 people to provide round the clock support.
The business models of the new domains expected people to buy millions of them in the first year. They did not understand that maybe it might take five years to build a critical mass.
It is always easier to look at someone elses business, particularly a successful one and decide that it is essentialy easy to run and cost free than to have your own idea. Look at all the folk who blundered into etail thinking that the economics of that space would somehow be different to the economics of mail order, a business notorious for its low margins and high infrastructure costs. Or look at the folk who blundered into home delivery of groceries, an even lower margin business, building $30 million distribution centers to serve markets that could not possibly support the interest payments, let alone register a profit.
Folk who have .name domains should not be too worried however. The same thing happened to .tv which spent through its initial VC funding at record pace and was bought out for about a tenth of the amount spent on building the brand. Someone will buy .name, although bidding is not likely to be brisk.
Looking for an Information Security student project suggestion?
Try http://dotcrimeManifesto.com/
I worked for a startup that was selling "third-level" domains to doctors under the .md domain. The company purchased severalthousand .md domains that represented "surnames". So we owned "smith.md", "wilson.md", etc.
/per year for a single second level .md domain).
.name, but the other issues we had problems with would:
.name folks are making some of the same mistakes, and not addressesing the inherent problems needed to overcome the issues. .md plan and .name share,
We provided web hosting (http://www.john.smith.md), email (john@smith.md), easy to use templates, for non tech savvy doctors.
Several issues worked against us. First the company controlling the second level domains (i.e. the "surnames") that we had to purchase, charged too much for the business model (upwards of $300
The other issue was we couldnever have all the names. so we could not do large "instatutional sales" effectively.
these first two issues shouldnot effect
1. Name Overlap -names are not unique, we never achieved a large enough user base for this to be much of an issue, but it did come up occasionally.
2. SPAM- the addresses are pretty easy to guess, since first@last is pretty easy to guess. the other SPAM issue was that more and more ISPs require the outgoing mail address to be on their network, and sothe users needed to configure the IMAP/POP accounts to use our sevrers, rather than their local ones.
3. User ignorance, the way the email was/is built of the second level domain (john@smith.md) and the website is off the third level - john.smith.md confused the users, the sales people, and management. We never effectively explained the subtle difference to non savvy users.
4. Long names. http://www.john.smith.md is an ok sized domain name,but if you had a long orhyphenated name, the email address and domain name become excessively long, and awkward to work with in "real world" applications,likeputting on business cards and letterhead.
In short it sees the
In retrospect there are several more trouble issues that both our
but no sense in beating a dead horse, they definately need some help, some luck, and cash if they expect to succeed.
I wish 'emluck cause I think they will need it...
-MS2k
The .name registry has some unique features:
- Customers register 3rd level names (ie: firstname.lastname.name)
- They charge an additional annual fee to have access to the corresponding e-mail address (firstname@lastname.name)
- Customers can't use the DNS services that they use for 'real' domain names
The dotName people had some lofty ambitions when the registry was created. They were hoping that their names would become the standard for unique ids over all kinds of communications -- they'd point to your website, e-mail, cell phone, etc. This sounds like a reasonable idea (a unique communications id), but names are not unique enough...
Is anyone familiar with any similar (but ideally smarter) efforts?
I must admit, I'm not surprised to see .name going tits-up, and I'll be surprised to see how .me.uk plays out over the next year or two. I think this whole notion of trying to cater to individuals is pretty well doomed - there's always going to be too many people with the same name, and they're going to end up as the exclusive preserves of the rich and vain people who happened to get there first. If they really want to sell domains to individuals, give them a bit of character... hands up anyone who wants their own .geek domain?
On a more general note, I may be missing something *really* significant, but I really think that the internet DNS system suffers heavily from piss-poor management. As it stands, we've got all these fairly uninspiring TLDs - .museum, .aero. .info, the list goes on. I can't believe any commercial organisation are going to go for a .biz or a .info domain without trying to get the .com as well. One of my clients provides information publishing services to the media industry, and they're now buying .com, .co.uk, .biz and .info for every domain they register - not 'cos it's bringing them any extra revenue, but because they're worried about cybersquatters and competitors trading on their brand.
Added to this, I really don't think ICANN are doing a particularly good job setting up the 'new' TLDs. I've said this before on /., but why the hell isn't there a .movie TLD? Every mainstream film that's released these days has an official website with a fat marketing budget behind it. Movies tend to have short, easily memorable name, and - more importantly - they're almost always unique names, to avoid people confusing one movie with another. Since films don't really depend on their internet presence for revenue the way many companies do, they'd probably be a lot more receptive to using something other than .com at the end. As long as the registration process was vetted the same way as .edu or .ac.uk, you'd rapidly create a system where a .movie site was guaranteed to be the 'real deal', leaving the fanboys to fight over www.starwarsepisode3.com. I'm sure there's numerous other candidates - .game, .book, .show, maybe .band or .music or somesuch. Certainly none of them can be any worse than .museum - do a Google search for 'museum', and see how many pages of results you have to go through to find a .museum TLD. I got bored after about a hundred results.
.sex and .xxx offer possibilities, too. It can't be that hard for an ISP or hosting company to insist that their customers use a specific TLD for pornographic sites. All concerned parents have to do is block access to .sex and voila! they can sleep at night believing their kiddies are safe from the child-eating internet porn monsters.
At the end of the day, if ICANN want to provide TLDs as a service, they've got to accept that no-one's going to get rich, and if they want to get rich, they should be identifying their potential markets just like any other business and working to meet the needs of those markets. TLDs like .name and .aero just seem like a waste of everybody's time and bandwidth.
-- Open Source: It's mad, but you don't have to work here to help.