Sunday, October 16, 2005
My feeling is that the demand for the .US country code top level domain (ccTLD) and resulting price increase will come from a few different factions. *The continual rise in .com values will be reflected in prices paid by the cheap seats crowd for alternatives. Kindof a high tide lifts all ships thing. *Foreign corporations (all sizes) will increase their use of the .us extension enabling them to "buy" their way in cheaply to hopefully some level of acceptance during the coming push for isolationism by Americans. Globalism will continue of course, but Americans have a bad taste LEFT over from the Iraq/Afghanistan conflicts etc.*Increasing development focus and shift from drop catching by domainers, and an overall increase in development by the public.*Local search will have a big impact on small business website development. Less url-bar type-ins and increased search savvy techniques by the masses. The local hair salon cannot afford the com domain but would settle for the .us address, creating a ground up or grass roots movement.As for current .us domain sales levels, I would suggest that we not be so quick to judge a market based on "reported" sales to date. As we've seen lately in disclosures by Deal Jam and others in the com arena, there are also unreported .US sales that would turn a few heads. Four figure .us sales were going on right after the introduction years ago now and I know of quite a few five figure sales following those. There are reasons for non-disclosure including running silent when you're on the buy side. Sometimes the news gets out. A personal .us purchase by one of my partners recently was rumored bid to mid 5 figures before being pulled from an ebay auction. He bot Business.us and I'm sure Duke (DNjournal.com) will have some notes on that one this week. Doc