Just because ICANN doesn’t mean we should …

ICANN’s liberalisation of the top-level domains market has certainly caused a splash. We’re back to talking about gold rushes and cybersquatting all over again. How it’s going to pan out in terms of brand management and the impact on search engine optimisation is uncertain. The costs are equally unknown, although expected to in the telephone number range for the ‘best’ TLDs.

Agencies, hosting companies, and domain registrars will all be rubbing their hands together at the opportunity to breathe new life into their business models. But I can’t quite help feeling that the whole shebang seems just a little passé …

On the Web the first time round, we all rushed onto the beach flinging our towels down and claiming our individual space. After a while we caught on that actually everyone was having fun at the bar, so we left our umbrellas where they were and joined the party. That’s Web 2.0.

Social networking is largely domainless (who cares or knows what my Facebook URL is!). What matters are the interactions on the platform and between platforms through data porting. So my Tweet is syndicated to my Friendfeed and then displayed on my Facebook profile. The ‘address’ of this information is actually irrelevant. The important bit is the community with which I am sharing my content and time.

The social Web is changing the landscape of ecommerce too. Some recent research from Quidco found that 62% of shoppers consult online communities before making a purchase. And that only 27% of consumers go directly to the retailer. And the top three reasons …

1. communities offer me unbiased facts about products and services (32%);

2. I trust the views of communities more than merchants (27%);

3. communities help me find the best deal available (27%).

Given the above, is spending a fortune to ‘protect the brand’ with a custom domain (and then spending even more to drive traffic to it) a worthwhile activity? Or should businesses take part in the communities where customers are already talking about their brand, engage them and turn them into advocates? In other words, will a hotel chain get more customer value out of a .hotel TLD, or a series of positive reviews on Tripadvisor? I strongly suspect the latter.

This is really a big business dilemma as SMEs won’t typically have the marketing budgets to worry about securing a new TLD. That could turn out to be an advantage, as whilst the big brands buy better picks and shovels to take part in the new gold rush, small business can be down at the saloon mixing it up with their customers and doing real business.

Posted by Ivan Croxford on July 1, 2008

Tags: communities, domains, ICANN, social networking, TLD