Hall of Crap Archive
January 12, 2012 | 3 Comments
The land grab is officially starting. For the first time since the popularization of the Internet, the big news today is that ICANN is opening up the ability for the creation of new suffixes that come after the dot, such as .com or .org. The open application process lets any organization apply to be the manager of a new top level domain (TLD) and applications are expected for everything from categories and industries like .ngo (for charities and nonprofits) or .city (for cities). In addition, of the over 2000 applications expected (despite the $185,000 application fee), more than 2/3rds will expected to be brands who are registering their own brand out of fear of cybersquatting.
This may not matter as much as many marketers and brands think it will. In fact, here are five big reasons why as of right now this is an overhyped development in technology:
1. History hasn't been kind to TLDs.
Wouldn't it be great if you were in the travel industry to be able to signify your site with a .travel domain name? Or for career sites to use .jobs? Or museums to use .museum? Well, all of those top level domains already exist. How often have you navigated to a site that uses any of them? New TLDs don't matter until people's behaviour starts to change for using them.
2. Any changes are years away.
The application process will be open for the next three months, and then will close. From that point, experts are predicting that it will be at least another year or two before ICANN is able to decide which of the TLDs are approved. The most obvious proof that this process will take years? There are a bunch of new consulting companies popping up as experts who can smell money to be made in the interim.
3. Categories will require a shakeout.
When tags started becoming popular to describe content online, it was seen as great news. Now you could describe content in a way that would index it automatically. The only problem is that people use different words. Some people call a retail place a shop and some call it a store. Will more people use .shop or .store? How about .bazaar or .boutique? Until there is a single word, a TLD for a category really won't matter.
4. Google is still the kingmaker.
What most people are forgetting in all the hype is that a TLD really won't matter at all unless almight Google decides to list it in search results. So which TLDs get approved matter less than which ones Google chooses to index as part of their regular search results.
5. The web is now global.
In the early days of the web, .com (short for communications) was ok because the vast majority of sites were in English. Today the web is a different place. So TLDs that are in English may not see wide adoption globally. And different countries may use different TLDs. So the truly global TLDs like .com or .org may be few and far between … and they may not be in English at all.
November 28, 2011 | 1 Comment
The fact that most retailers use the term "doorbuster" to describe their best deals from this weekend should tell you everything you need to know about the frenzied few days of retail activity that traditionally follows Thanksgiving day in America. Despite futile protests from lots of unfortunate retail workers who had to give up parts of their holiday, stores opened…Read More >>
September 25, 2007 | 11 Comments
Many of you may have already caught this yesterday, but this blog was cited in the Recommended Reading section of the Wall Street Journal yesterday in an article by Keith Huang. As Jay Berkowitz from Ten Golden Rules shares on his team blog, my blog was one of 60 resources that they recommended to the journalist as part of their…Read More >>
August 9, 2007 | 17 Comments
I am a passionate hater of Ticketmaster.com. Paying a surcharge to a site whose main purpose it is to make it difficult for me to complete an online transaction seems wrong on every level. Imagine you were forced to make every travel booking for any hotel you ever wanted to stay at through Expedia.com. That’s the equivalent of the monopoly…Read More >>
June 14, 2007 | 8 Comments
Good advertising is based on insights … a singular idea or truth that gets to the heart of a product or brand. The trouble with insight, though, is that it comes in two forms. There is insight that can help you to create a great communications message – and there is insight that can help you do your business better. …Read More >>
May 30, 2007 | 4 Comments
In case you hadn’t heard – Ask.com has a new advertising campaign through their new partnership with Crispin, Porter & Bogusky (CP+B) focused on making a hero out of the algorithm. The idea behind the marketing strategy is described on their blog: If you get great search results, you don’t care why or how you got them. But for more…Read More >>
February 23, 2007 | 6 Comments
Blackberry’s recent "Share Your Stories" campaign was inspiring for me, though probably not in the way they intended. I actually love my Blackberry, but their entire "Share your Story" campaign just struck me as lacking in any of the lessons many other marketers have learned about Web 2.0 marketing and what works in social media. The mistakes were so basic,…Read More >>
January 12, 2007 | 24 Comments
Apparently, the latest "innovation" in advertising is offering up ad space on the bottom of those security bins used in every airport. Despite fears that it might confuse people during an already confusing moment of separating liquids and laptops into quart-sized bags, it seems that airport authorities are ready to go ahead with the plan (according to a piece earlier…Read More >>
December 27, 2006 | Leave a Comment
Let’s start with a warning … this is the "clip show" post where I recycle a lot of old material so if that causes you extreme pain, please close this window now and come back tomorrow. For all the rest of you, it’s the holidays and a quick glance around the marketing blogosphere will show that these clip show posts…Read More >>
August 6, 2006 | 5 Comments
I came across an interesting viral campaign for the upcoming movie "Snakes on a Plane" where users can go online and enter names to have a personalized viral message sent to someone spoken by Samuel L. Jackson. I have seen this viral talking idea before, such as with the "7 days left" campaign for The Ring 2 … but in…Read More >>
The land grab is officially starting. For the first time since the popularization of the Internet, the big news today is that ICANN is opening up the ability for the creation of new suffixes that come after the dot, such as .com or .org. The open application process lets any organization apply to be the manager of a new top level domain (TLD) and applications are expected for everything from categories and industries like .ngo (for charities and nonprofits) or .city (for cities). In addition, of the over 2000 applications expected (despite the $185,000 application fee), more than 2/3rds will expected to be brands who are registering their own brand out of fear of cybersquatting.
3 Comments