Expert view: Michael Berkens

With the release of applications for the new gTLD process, we asked a number of industry experts for their views of what the information shows.

Michael Berkens

Director, RightoftheDot.com

What is your overall feeling about the applications?
Well I think it was as interesting to see who applied as who did not apply.

Google i think shocked everyone applying for so many generic TLDs, Donuts shocked the world by applying for over 300 after talking about applying for 10.

It was good to see domainers among the applicants including Frank Schilling, the Directi group and Daniel Negari.

I was equally surprised to see Apple not applying for dot-app especially in light of the fact that they have been in litigation over the trademark for App Store with Amazon for quite a while or dot-mac which was could have been applied for by the cosmetic company and therefore lost.

I was also surprised not to see an application from eBay, Facebook and Twitter who have millions of active members.

What application(s) would you give the WTF Award to?
Well for a particular string I don't get the application for dot-ping, I don't see who the universe of applicants for a dot-ping domain would be and it when you factor in the costs of defending the probable objection of the trademark holder on the term, I just don't get the risk to value.

On the company level I think Demand Media has the strangest collection of applications with strings like dot-airforce, dot-navy, dot-republican, dot-democrat, dot-kaufen, dot-moda. and dot-moto. I just don't see if you have an unlimited number of choices for strings and decide to apply for 26 how those make it into the top of that list.

On the other hand I think that pound for pound, Famous Four Media had the best collection of strings of any of the large applicants.

I wonder how many applicants have given proper thought to competitive strings in the same vertical. I know everyone has been consumed with how many other applicants there would be for the same string but when you look at some verticials the potiential are seeking the same base of customers it gets really interesting. Two come to mind the legal vertical and the real estate vertical.

Not only do you have multiple applicants for .law but you also have competition within the same vertical: Lawyer, Legal, Attorney and Esq. In the real estate vertical you have multiple applicants for dot-realestate but also dot-mls, dot-realty, dot-property, dot-realtor, dot-home, dot-rentals, dot-condos, and dot-casa.

It will be interesting to see how many companies and people spend the money to file objections to strings and of course when it comes time for auction to see how much some of the strings go for.

My final thought is applying for strings is one thing, operating, managing and marketing of strings is quite another.

Donuts has 120 unopposed application so assuming no objection they will be operating at least 120 strings. Considering the largest TLD owner/operator as we speak is Verisign which operates four TLDs, is a public company with a market cap of almost $7 billion and thousands of employees running 77 or more of these is going to be an amazing task.

Michael Berkens is a director of gTLD consultancy RightoftheDot.com, as well as President of Worldwide Media Inc. He publishes a blog on the domain industry at TheDomains.com.