The future of domain names in 2007 and beyond.

Late 2006 and early 2007 has been great to the domain name market. Usually late december is slow with sporadic sales here and there. In late 2006 we witnessed several large sales with no breaks in the market. Hopefully this shows how 2007 will be and maybe even into 2008-2009. There have been several "thinktanks" on where the industry is going and here are a few different topics:

A question was asked at DOMAINfest on whether the PPC system or even the entire domain name system would be wiped out. Timothy Schumacher, CEO/founder of Sedo.com answered saying he couldn't see the domain name system failing for at least 30 years. He failed to answer whether he thought the PPC system would fail, but it's somewhat self explainatory when he wrote the college paper which pioneered the way for the PPC system.

.tvs

“We will also see even more clearly the intersection of the domain name space and the media space,” Stahura said. “Take .tv for example. With the explosion of video content on the Internet, I think we will see the .tv top level domain grow the most compared to other TLDs.” Of course, Stahura now has a special interest in .tv since registry owner Verisign turned management of that extension over to eNom in the final quarter of 2006.


However, Stahura isn’t alone in predicting better things for .tv. Those who were at the T.R.A.F.F.I.C. East conference in Hollywood, Florida in October will remember keynote speaker Tom Gardner of the Motley Fool predicting .tv would be the sleeper hit of 2007 (a pronouncement greeted with stunned disbelief by his audience, but one that now seems prescient to some)."

The question about .tvs was also asked at DOMAINfest and most of the audience laughed.


Ron Sheridan's view on domain names in 2007. Mr. Sheridan is the Director of Business Development and DomainSponsor.com.

"Sheridan sees another potential bright spot in the year ahead. “IDNs (International Domain Names) could be big in 2007. We’re already seeing a rush to scoop up generics in this category. The recent release of the IE7 browser has a lot to do with the boost of interest here, with its ability to support non-Romanized characters. Parking services will need to cater to these domains with relevant foreign language keywords and ads,” Sheridan noted.

Parking revenues overall will gradually increase in 2007, with the potential exception of high-risk names and portfolios. Publishers will continue to demand higher levels of consistency and performance from their parking vendors. Those with technical expertise, disciplined management and financial strength will continue to force the weaker players out,” Sheridan said. "


Frank Schilling's view on the future of domain names. Mr. Schilling is thought to be the most successful domain investor in the world.

"Frank Schilling, who heads Name Administration, Inc. (and is regarded by many to be the world’s most successful domain investor) said “In 2007 domain registrants will have to plan and organize against the trifecta of unscrupulous registrars, registries intent on pricing registrants out of the renewals on their hard won intellectual property; and other covetous latecomers who unfairly try to unseat registrants from their generic names.

“The pendulum always swings both ways however and I think there will be significant, multifaceted pushback on any bold-faced inequity. The stakes and number of industry participants at this later stage have just grown too large to permit one-sided or unbalanced outcomes,” Schilling said."



Many portions of this blog entry have come from DNjournal.com. DNjournal.com is considered the hub of information for domain names for domainers all over the world.