The New gTLDs Are Like Cellphones In 1974

martin-cooper-cellphone

I can still remember getting my first cellphone, I think the year was 2001. I felt so cool, I was on the bleeding edge of technology, an early adopter, and something that I knew was going to change the world. Almost nobody I knew had cellphones and the reasons to use a landline phone were still incredibly compelling.

I can also still remember what people used to say about cellphones in the early 2000’s, things like:

“I will never get a cellphone, I hate the idea of people being able to contact me anytime anywhere”

or

“Why would I want a cellphone, the reception on my landline is perfect”

Soon, everyone had cellphones. Then Smartphones came out and it started all over again. I was also an early adopter of Smartphones and once again I heard things like:

“I would never use a smartphone, why would I want to write an email on my phone?”

or

“I just want to use a phone as a phone, I have a computer for everything I want to do online”

I can also remember Domainers in 2007 sayings that people were always going to access the web from their computers. Now a majority of people access the Internet from their phones, not their computer, oh and everyone I know (including both my parents) have Smartphones.

I think new gTLDs today are like cellphones in the early 2000’s. It’s so early that there are no meaningful statistics around use, sales, or anything else that comes with mass adoption…but many are only a year old or less.

While I still think that .COM is a great investment we’re starting to sound like an industry of Dinosaurs thinking that there is no way that we could ever live in a world where some new gTLDs actually take off. Sure there aren’t a ton of new gTLD sales out there, or great usage statistics, there also weren’t many sales or usage statistics in 1986, a year after the first domain name (Symbolics.com) was registered.

Did you know that the first cellphone came out in 1973? A whole twenty years went by and still nobody thought they would take-off. So why are we expecting that new domain extensions should suddenly gain mass adoption in one year, or two, or even five?

My point is a simple one. In the near term, and by near-term I mean ten years, .COM will most-likely rein supreme. However for those of us planning on living for twenty years or more, I would find it hard to believe that we could sit here in 2030 and see all the new gTLDs fail and everyone still laser-focused on .COM, it’s so unlikely it’s starting to sound crazy.

Thoughts anyone?

Image SourceGizMag

Morgan Linton

Morgan Linton