[governance] The billion-dollar domain babies

[Yehuda Katz]

The billion-dollar domain babies
By: Naseem Javed

Art. ref.: http://www.bizcommunity.com/Article/196/16/26138.html
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The latest ICANN plan to allow the global populace to assemble an entire domain
name like www.yourname.yourname as their free-choice is a revolutionary and
timely decision. This now open doors to cyber-brands such as my.ibm,
hotel.chicago, it.jobs, play.poker, fly.usa or go.dell and applicants will
submit a non-refundable fee of US$100 - 500 000 for each name idea and the
businesses are already jumping to get started.

A new study estimates that this new registration process would create US$33
billion in fees in the first three years. The prime beneficiaries will be
ICANN, which operates as a not-for-profit organisation, but it still would have
to deliver a highly structured, high speed service and meet global needs.

Real beneficiaries

Other big recipients will be the worldwide domain registrars and highly
specialised experts and lawyers, while the cascading revenues will go to IT and
web support organisations. The public at large will become the real
beneficiaries as a billion new users will come online, millions of new
interactive gateways will open and thousands of new global brands will emerge.
This will make a global impact and bring a new face to the global e-commerce.
The study also points out how in countries around the world, new national clubs
of overnight billion-dollar domain name owners will emerge, all fueling the new
global race. 

In contrast, for over a decade, and after toying with nickel-and-dime
registration fees and fighting over domain names, this mature approach will
alter the domain name perceptions for the global business community, as by and
large, domain names have been the most grossly overlooked aspect of a name
identity assumed to be only to be handled by junior programmers and web
designers.

The new registration process has built-in controls and gone will be the days
when billion dollar businesses were on their hands and knees when some kid had
their domain name squatted for a nickel and had the capability to pull the
corporate strings. In those earlier days, at US$70 per domain name, up to a
million names per day were being registered. The success was so huge that
VeriSign ended up being sold for US$22 billion. 

Catapult overnight

This latest approach allows great ideas to catapult into overnight
global-cyber-name-brands of extraordinary proportions, yet the game must be
played fairly and with proper registration while accommodating all the
trademark issues. However, the businesses will have to deploy smart and
professional strategies with a commanding knowledge of global corporate
nomenclature and cyber name identity ownership.

The logo-design-driven methods of the previous century are rapidly being
replaced by name-identity-driven cyberspace. Names like the ultimate flag
carriers of the brand will skate around the world and tap the right customers,
using the latest online multimedia-searching and cyber-branding tools, and this
rule of owning a perfect name with a perfect suffix will propel a brand to new
stratosphere overnight. 

Spending millions

After years of research in the making, according to this latest study by ABC
Namebank, entitled "The New-Name-Economy & 2010 Cyber Branding Strategies",
there are already some 18 700 companies in the world today that will apply
under this new policy, either by choice or forced by competitive elements, they
need to secure layers around their existing brand name identity. Based on their
huge budgets, the suggested fee of 100K to 500K is easily affordable. Already,
most big companies are either spending millions pushing poorly crafted names or
spending millions on defending hit and run squatters. 

According to this study, there is also a huge second layer of applicants, where
some 1.1 million businesses representing the big commercial interests from all
the countries of the world that will enter this arena. These organisations
basically have no choice but to fully embrace the new model as the performance
of their current and existing name identities are already seriously
questionable. There are also the Government and Municipal bodies all over the
world and thousands of trade associations which would like to form exclusive
consortiums to create cyber-umbrella-identities. 

The study further refers to the last layers of entrepreneurial players from all
over the world who will enter this arena to quickly become the next eBay,
Google YouTube or Dell, using the mix of multimedia forces and online
visibility. The study confirms the role of the dotcom suffix as still being the
king, and will remain so until the new system is fully entrenched over the next
5 - 10 years. 

High-class tone

All told, the new registration formula brings a serious high-class tone to the
process, the sophistication of creating building and playing on this new name
economy will be awesome. Only the best-designed and properly crafted highly
logical identities that will pass the stringent test of the Five Star Standard
available on the net will have the chance to join the real race while the
others will merely be the spectators. Business naming is a very tactical,
black-and-white exercise and is not to be confused by typical logo-driven
agency project. 

The study also challenges the high non-refundable costs for being very
difficult for non-profit, public organization, developing countries,
educational services, and religious and local community organisation and
suggest that the huge economy of scale should bring it to a very moderate fee
comparable to a regular highly automated and streamlined current global
trademark filing fee structure.

The approval system should be based on the globally recognised Intellectual
Property and Trademark Guidelines, making the process highly transparent and
easy to decipher the consequences, with efficient, quick and cost effective
outcomes. The entire programme must become a high-speed critical mass to make
its global impact and benefit the global users online. The study offers
configurations of various National Consortium Registration Models and corporate
and public bidding routines. This has resulted in new revival methodologies for
advertising agencies that will assist the rules of global nomenclature.

The early 2009 launch is already very tight. It requires tactical game planning
for businesses to fully sort out preplanned and desired identities and the
posture to go after securing them against a global competition. Corporations
have already started serious discussions on how to capture the most creative
and powerful solutions. Initially, the early domain names took a decade to
spread around the globe but today, they are entrenched in every walk of life
and, like a tsunami, they will all descend at once from all over the globe in
this new race. The global businesses and the public both are gathering fast at
the starting lines, getting set and ready to sprint. The shot has been fired.

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Don't you just love it , $cann
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