Puddle to Pond. Pond to Lake. Lake to River. River to Ocean

Morning Folks!!


When I started in domains there was not even a puddle. Just a drip or two of moisture. Eventually turned into a puddle. Then domaining came to be and we turned into a pond. We have been a pond for a very long time. Then recently we have turned the corner of being a lake. And when 1800 .whatevers come thru we will be a river. The river eventually leads to the ocean and there you have the entire history of domaining and the future of it as well.


Rick Schwartz




33 thoughts on “Puddle to Pond. Pond to Lake. Lake to River. River to Ocean

  1. Anunt

    When there’s a flood, value always goes down!
    The tsunami of .whatevers is coming…you can sit there and buy ALL the dot com life jackets and board up your houses with .net and .co…but when the flood .whatevers hits…prepare to get washed away…
    The warning bells are ringing…the sirens are going off…the king has declared a state of emergency…only way to survive this tsunami is to get the fuck out of town…
    Don’t be a hero…sell everything and leave town happy…
    Don’t look at what u had, look at what u have.

    Reply
  2. Domainer

    Aunt disagree 100 percent! .whatever is confusion. Maybe 3 out 100 extensions will take off.
    @Rick good post! Perfectly said. Let the agendas begin and Ricks friends with deep pockets are devaluing there whole portfolio and feel threatened by .whatever . Are they even aware of this? Call it a hedge. Call it whatever way you want but they have some hidden agendas. That simple!
    No one can fuck with the .com!

    Reply
  3. KA

    .whatever is confusion but it will flood the market, and money will spread thinner. It will no doubt hurt .com values and perception, more so then .Co, .Mobi and others. These extensions weren’t big successes for premium priced domains or speculators or investors but they sure suck serious money out of .com, money that if they weren’t there would go to .com owners.

    Reply
  4. Rick Schwartz

    It’s just a passing storm and I can prove it. That’s wht I see the light at the end of the tunnel. After the storm, there will be OVER 1700 carcuses laying around.
    How much does .mobi take out of the market TODAY?
    How much does .xxx take out of the market TODAY?
    How much does .net take out of the market TODAY?
    How much does .biz take out of the market TODAY?
    How much does .travel take out of the market TODAY?
    And they had the stage ALL to themslves.
    These folks are gonna be sharing it with lots of others. They will SMOTHER each other.
    They all have their day in the sun and unfortunately WILT away after the hype is over!

    Reply
  5. Furkat

    Tsunami will hit the dot.whatever shit is near the sea of new domains. You can save yourself by building a proper boat which can sail through this wave. It is dot.com boat test by time.

    Reply
  6. BillW

    .com (or the url) provided the visual TRUSTED address that you know have navigated to the”right” website. That domain name is the VISUAL CONFIRMATION right on your computers address bar that you have arrived at the exact website your were seeking. That is not going away anytime soon….but take it from a guy who built the system. :)
    Last paragraph summarizes”those (.com etc) addresses are here to stay” from the man who ‘invented’ the internet:
    http://www.wired.com/wiredenterprise/2012/06/sir-tim-berners-lee/?utm_source=Contextly&utm_medium=RelatedLinks&utm_campaign=Previous

    Reply
  7. Yin

    .net .biz .us .info have been dropping life flies,
    We all know Anunt got margin called on Facebook stock,
    And was forced to liquidate domain holdings.
    He has nothing invested now, and realizes once good domains
    get into safe hands, impossible to shake loose at nothing less
    than end user value.
    Listen guys new registries are greedy they will hoard anything
    that sounds good for prem auctions, much like mobi but without the hype.
    End users are going with 3 word .coms over 2 word .nets.
    .biz is a good sounding extension if you have a business, .us is a good branding domain, why
    are small businesses spending thousands on .coms while these sit unregistered?
    We all know who gets rich when their is a fake hurricane warning….

    Reply
  8. Anunt

    I see that there are a lot of heros here that are going to ride this storm out…
    This is an EARLY warning to get the fuck out of town safely with more than half of your stuff.
    Tsunami is going to hit in early 2014…and if you wait till the end of this year to get out…prepare to get stuck in traffic with ALL the highways packed with people trying to leave ALL at once…
    Right now, u can get out easily with minor losses, but if u wait till end of the year…u will not be able to get out and will be forced to ride the tsunami which will definately crush everyone in its path.
    Even Frank is trying to get out as fast as he can by building a domainnamesales platform…he has over 300,000+ stuff to move before the tsunami hits…he knows he cannot move it all by himself so he built a platform so that everybody can help him sell everything.
    Frank and Google and several big players invested millions in this tsunami…they are NOT stupid…
    Sell everything and get the fuck out NOW…you have been warned…
    Don’t look at what you had, look at what you still have!!!

    Reply
  9. henry

    When naming a company consumers will always choose dot com because this is what they see plastered all over so this is what they assume is needed. Non internet aware consumers don’t know the difference from one to the other but only what they see so they choose dot com. If the dot com is for sale for a reasonable price the typical consumer will buy the dot com but if you can register a .net .biz. us .web. .store etc…….. for 20 bucks what would the non aware internet user choose? Definitely not the $5,000 or $50,000 dot com. Add in thousands of more extensions with big marketing and the consumer may forgot about dot com all together and go for whatever is affordable. I believe some dot coms will continue to hold their value but for internet only ventures. Ventures that are not brick and mortar but rely 100% on internet sales. These are the ones that will buy the dotcoms. Big corporations are already marketing in other directions by using backslashes with their dotcoms and Facebook, twitter etc…..It seems gone are the days that corporate america is buying great slogan dotcoms to use for a few months in marketing. The landscape is changing and the key is to figure out how to make money with the changing times. Rick screams from the hilltops dot com is king but is setting himself up for success by screaming LEASE, LEASE!!! He is giving corporate america the chance to own million dollar names for cheap and in doing so Rick is going to be able to compete with thousands of new cheap extensions because in reality a lease will be cheap compared to buyout cost.

    Reply
  10. Good Domains

    I guess all the non-dot coms will be affected.And significant of dor com domains will not succeed in surviving.Only a handful of good dot coms will not only survive but also enjoy incresed value.

    Reply
  11. BullS

    That what I love this domaining …each day more and more BS
    Some say it will be great
    some say it will be dip shit and run for the hills
    relax guys, go take a smoke and all will be fine.

    Reply
  12. Joao

    I was reading the article about .gay on Mike B. site and the thing that poped in my mind was, if he doesn’t want to get domainers in his boat, and will implement some stuff to prevent it…will he demand a gay certification?
    Will the slogan be”Certified gays only…straights will have to wait.”?
    Anyway…have a good weekend.

    Reply
  13. RaTHeaD

    hey rick…
    either you are right and they are wrong or
    they are right and you are wrong.
    BIG CLUE: you are right and they are wrong.
    “When a true genius appears in the world,
    you may know him by this sign, that the dunces
    are all in a confederacy against him.” – jonathan swift

    Reply
  14. Daniel

    It looks like Anunt is trying to create confusion and panic so he can buy up good .coms

    Reply
  15. Uzoma

    How can you tell that .whatever is not going to work?
    Simple. Look to see if .mobi. .biz, .travel, and .us s being snapped up.
    If nobody is rushing to buy these short beautiful extensions, why would they want .gay? I mean, with .us you get the entire United States of America.
    Once upon a time, a king bought flower.mobi for hundreds of thousands; then a certain scribe laughed at him for buying a non-dot com, only to turn around many years later to buy the domain from the king for over $5000
    When the king bought flower.com i was a speculative investment that made sense, but when the scribe bought it from the king, it was a dumb ass move because it was known to be a flopped .whatever.
    Enough said.

    Reply
  16. Tom

    Anunt was spamming the boards trying to sell flowers.mobi …
    Look who is still buying .com’s…
    Domain Name: BUCKHEADLOANS.COM
    Created on: 13-Jan-13
    Expires on: 13-Jan-14
    Last Updated on: 13-Jan-13
    Registrant:
    Anunt Patel

    Reply
  17. BullS

    Uzoma…..you are so smart!!!
    dot whatever dot blah blah are only good for the registrars, money in their pocket. For the rest, you are a sucker.
    Please don’t BS the master of”Bulls”
    dot com is ..what again….Kinggggggggggggg

    Reply
  18. Tom

    Ok let’s get real guys if .biz or .us hadn’t come out yet, they would be up for grabs in this new extension pull out… That is a given, some company would have wanted those extensions, considering they had never been introduced… Even .travel how is it doing?
    So I used to see generic keywords in .biz, and .us, even strong last names registered, some companies doing business under them as well, they are all gone. The ones that are owned are warehoused by domainers, looking to make a few hundred bucks, on some sucker, but deep down they know it is a $8 long shot. Sure .info had some nice spikes at 99 cents, when renewals went back up to regular price, drop drop drop….
    I know guys like Anunt, they are always chasing… chasing… got in to late, paid to much, looking around, not making any money, see the next hoop dream, sell everything for what they can get, and rinse, repeat… Anunt time to get a real job, maybe you can become a leasing consultant.

    Reply
  19. BillW

    Hey Anunt…
    I have moved into the IDN space (International Domain Names) MOSTLY .COM
    But the domains are all keywords and geos in Chinese, Russian, Japanese, Thai and Hindi languages. They already get some pretty good type in, I made over $18k parking at Bodis with my IDNs last year, and the bell hasn’t even rung.
    Verisign applied to”alias” .com into all those languages so you get 2 for 1, BOTH english .com and .com (translits for russian, chinese, hindi etc)
    Do you think that the 80% of the people in the world that don’t speak English in these countries will type in native language .COM domains they can actually read and write (since they don’t read english).
    These Verisign .COMs in Russian, Chinese, Japanese, Thai, Hebrew, Hindi etc will go into the root somettime this year….do you think I should hold or sell these .COM?

    Reply
  20. Domainer 2

    BUT WAIT — you forgot .aero, .biz, .museum, .asia, .coop, .tel, .pro, .jobs, and .cat!
    Snicker, snicker.
    Can we also add these all up and say that, collectivly, they take ZERO out of the market today?
    Tee hee hee!
    Sorry boys and girls, I agree with the Rickster. Seems painfully obvious that gtlds will soon join the others already mentioned in the Wikipedia ashheap of history.

    Reply
  21. Leon

    Well said these would be among the names chosen had they not already been introduced.
    Not sure how the naysayers can dispute this?

    Reply
  22. UFO

    Infortunately Henry the Horse you haven’t worked out that the best in class will aspire to be best in class and therefore a .com.
    All the wanabees without capital will take .whatever, but when they want to step up they will want the .com
    .com will continue to be used by the biggest of players so it will alwats be the aspirational URL and the ones consumers identify with those that have made it.

    Reply
  23. UDO

    lol, I think instead of a ‘sunrise period’ they are going to call it ‘morning glory’.

    Reply
  24. Dudley

    The gtld’s will be the best things for .com ever.
    I give them each 30 days before it becomes obvious that they are all .duds.

    Reply
  25. Anunt

    You morons need to stop comparing .mobi, .travel, .xxx, .etc, etc…
    You can NOT compare these to the tsunami of 1800+ domains flooding the market with huge corporation owners such as Google, etc, etc.
    When 20 to 30 new extensions came out, people do NOT notice…ask the average joe on the street right now if they have ever heard of .mobi or .xxx….they will say NO…
    But wait until 1800 new extensions come out…and with all the marketing on TV, Ads…and Google…this will be noticed by everyone…and will only become more and more popular as more extensions keep coming out year after year…
    Yes, the new extension domains are going to be worth under $10 bucks…but thats what the average joe expects to pay for domains…
    Average joe still can not understand why someone would pay over $100 for a domain name when they can register a bull crap domain for under $10.
    When you see John Jones thru John Jones eyes, you will sell John Jones what John Jones buys…
    Someone from the domaining world needs to take a camera on the street and ask live domaining questions…and see how much an average joe knows about domains…they dont know SHIT…
    Average Joe does NOT know that there are new extensions coming out yet…but when Google and other big corporations start giving out FREE domains to these average Joes, the word will spread quickly…very quickly…and NO ONE WILL BUY DOT COM, NOT EVEN FOR $10…
    Why pay $10 for a domain when Google gives out FREE domains…
    Dot com type in traffic will slowly evaporate…as people run to google and apps and all the other new shit that will come out…
    This is the internet…you can not make parallels to anything we have seen in the past…the internet is changing daily…Facebook just came out…and that bitch is worth over $50 Billion…
    Everytime i see someone on the internet, they are on Facebook or checking emails…
    Who would have known that Facebook is going to change the world when it just came out…
    This internet thing is moving very fast…
    Dot com here today…
    Dot com gone tommorrow…
    Good Luck to All

    Reply
  26. Uzoma

    Think about it this way:
    John Jones may not know SHIT, but John Jones knows one thing: John Jones sees what extension Google.com is using, or Facebook.com, or ebay.com, or Apple.com, or Godaddy.com…
    John Jones will be asking: why is Google giving away .whatever for frr to me while Google is using .com? John Jones will say”fuck Google, I’m going to use what Google is using”.
    In order for .whatever to work, all major corporations, and social media will have to change from .com to .whatever. As far as they stay with .com, only a fool will make such move. You may think the public doesn’t get it, but you are wrong. The average John Jones doesn’t understand other extensions because there’s nothing to understand. You want to do taxes? You go to HR Block, you want to register a domains? You go to Godaddy for a .Com, that’s the way the public thinks of it.

    Reply
  27. UFO

    .com isn’t for the average Joe. Good .com’s are for serious commercial entities that know if you’re going to be the real deal in the real world then it pays to have the URL that all the big players have.
    Seriously. You know NOTHING about large corporates, many run legacy systems that should have been replaced decades ago… but they don’t because it costs so much. The cost to a seriously large major corp to take the .com off their branding a route everything through something else would cost them a fortune. They won’t do it, and for the next decade or 2 YOU WILL SEE .COM on advertising and on the screen. OVER AND OVER AND OVER reinforced into consumer minds.
    At least 100b must have been spent on advertising that bears .com in the US alone. NO new extension is ever getting anywhere near that, and Chicken Little wanabees won’t change that. There will always be one domain at the apex and that will be .com. It’s that friggin simple.
    Your $500 flip specials might take a beating, but real domainers aren’t in that tyre kicker space anyway.

    Reply
  28. Anunt

    John Jones loves FREE SHIT
    Have you guys seen TV ads with fucked up domains with numbers in them…
    People are not willing to spend over $10 for a decent domain…
    People are even using facebook.com/”domains”…
    They don’t care about dot com…they just want FREE SHIT

    Reply
  29. BillW

    Verisign is about to spread the”.com” brand in transliterations that sound just like”.COM” to
    over 2 Billion (majority) being non-English speaking EXISTING online internet users:
    •1.1 billion – Existing Internet users in Asia.
    •519 million – Existing Internet users in Europe.
    •255 million – Existing Internet users Latin America
    / Caribbean.
    •167 million – Existing Internet users in Africa.
    • 90 million – Existing users in the Middle East.
    •565 million – Existing Internet users in China
    (more than any other country in the world.)
    http://royal.pingdom.com/2013/01/16/internet-2012-in-numbers/
    2013 is Round 1- Chinese .com, Japanese .com,
    Hindi .com, Thai .com, Russian .kom, Arabic .com
    and Hebrew .com all transliterations that sound
    just like .COM in english, but written in the v
    arious languages. Best part, you get both the
    english and the foreign language equivalent. :)
    .COM is perhaps going to be the biggest impact of
    the NEW gTLD program in countries that already know
    .com in English, now they get”both” the english and native transliteration of .com. Just my 2 cents,
    but Verisign may very well be the biggest winner in
    the new gTLD story.
    And as the internet grows in these billion population markets via smart phones becoming the computers of
    the future throughout China, Japan, India and all
    around the world where English is not spoken the
    .com brand will become even more the dominant brand.

    Reply
  30. Danny Welsh

    If you’re in the”500″ among domain name owners you don’t look to reach”John Jones” to buy or lease your domain name in 2013 here 20 years after you first hand registered a domain name.
    When will people get it how little the average person gives a crap about ‘domaining’? The common consumer like your aunt or uncle doesn’t even know what a domain name IS, even if they go to a website that is built”on” a domain name on their computer or mobile device several times per day. They don’t know the difference. They visit .com WEBSITES that belong to COMPANIES in response to ADVERTISING and CONTENT and REFERRALS etc.
    (ASIDE: though a sub-set of them do visit .com’s as type in traffic with no prompting needed…Why? Read this entire blog and you’ll know why human nature paired with the way things have evolved has made .com the now and forever standard)
    If you’re in the”500″ among .com domain name visionaries that made their first bet on the future in the 1990s by registering a”domain name” when people thought you were a little weird…you don’t look to reach”John Jones” in 2013 at ALL. The Fortune 500 can do that for you, when they partner with you. Let THEM sell John Jones”category” products using Category.com and pay you an ongoing income as a lease. Simple, straight forward.
    The new kid on the block in”category” industry that wants to be in the Fortune 500 (or in the Inc. 1000) can do it for you, too. Let THEM sell John Jones”category” products using Category.com and pay you a cut as an equity share as their company grows. Simple, straight forward.
    Stop working so hard, top domainers!
    You have arrived and the future is NOW.
    Danny Welsh
    JointVentures.com

    Reply
  31. Jeff Schneider

    Hi Bill,
    I see you have been doing your homework, congratulations. These transliterations are cementing the .COM Brand to the masses psyches.
    re.” Just my 2 cents,
    but Verisign may very well be the biggest winner in
    the new gTLD story.”
    The only thing I would add to this, is all the corporate End Usera of .COM foundations as well as owners will be the biggest winners.
    Your original observation is Brilliant.
    Gratefully, Jeff Schneider (Contact Group) (Metal Tiger)

    Reply

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