Pixelrage.net

I was amongst the angry mob on the day when the .me and .tel domain names went into open registration. I was able to get 17 .me’s that day (many of them one-word generic terms), and I got 1 .tel on its open registration day. All of these domains have been parked since then, and the results are dismal.

For starters, I had very high expectations of the .me extension for obvious reasons. Who wouldn’t jump at the opportunity to register domains ending in “me”? They’re brandable, and from day one, automatically associated themselves with the huge trend of the social networking world. Not only that, Google even stated that .me’s could be stripped of their location tracking to the country of Montenegro, making them universal. When one thinks .me, they think about personal profile sites, social networking sites, forums or anything else where people can connect or share stuff.

The result? All .me domain hacks (call.me, tell.me, etc.) were instant hits and auctioned off for 5-figures within a week of being registered; one of the most expensive .me domains, Toyota.me, almost reached 6-figures (not bad for a domain name that is also a TRADEMARK VIOLATION – simply incredible…)

As expected, all of the high-demand keywords (date, loan, insure, etc.) achieved the same success. Everything else just went to hell. Internet marketing forums everywhere started getting activity in any forum topic named “what’s your opinion of .me?” or “is .me worth it?”, followed by pages of responses from people who were optimistic and assured each other that this is merely a new extension which will only grow in demand, much like .tv did. Others bashed the extension, calling it a fad. Those are the people you’ll want to listen to.

It’s All About .ME (and my anger with this crappy extension)

It’s now nearly two years after .me’s release. I’ve been parking those domains since day one, and only 2 out of 17 of my .me domains got type-in traffic. I’m beyond disappointed – some of them are premium domain .me’s, yet, they’re getting the visibility of a two-dashed .info domain. Why? I think that there may be a couple reasons: 1) the public simply does not know that .me exists – and this is most likely. 2) anything that isn’t a .com or .net typically won’t get type-in traffic, except from fellow domainers looking to see what’s already there.

I now have a portfolio of over 370 domain names. That’s nothing compared to any real domainer. However, I’ve been in the game for ten years now, and I have learned quite a bit during that time span. I see how .com and .net domains get true type-in traffic, and everything else barely gets any visibility at all. However, building up any domain will do nothing short of helping it be seen.

There’s my bit of faith: if your .me domains aren’t getting type-ins, try building mini-sites on them. I think that the reason why we aren’t seeing .me extension sites showing up in SERPs is simply because everyone is hording them, parking them and not doing anything constructive with them. But, maybe that’s wishful thinking. As with any of these new extensions, public awareness won’t happen until some mega-corporation starts using one, and advertising it on national TV.

What the Hell Happened to .TEL

As for .tel – don’t expect any enthusiasm from me with this extension. I initially thought .tel was nothing more than another failure waiting to happen, unless something spectacular was going to happen between this domain extension and the telecom industry. Still, I was a good sport and sat around on release day, looking for available domains.

Since .tel was originally intended for mobile phone users, it only made sense to target local-based domain names. I registered the exact word .tel domain of my local county, hoping that it would be of some value someday. I even thought about setting up a program where local  businesses could pay me to be included on this .tel site.

Note that with a .tel domain, you cannot park or even create a website for it. The whole .tel domain system gives you an online template that you can add information to – you can’t change its colors, font type or anything else, though.

As the months went by, the hype sure died down for .tel to the point where one even wondered if the extension were still around. Dotster, the most famous registrar of .tel, eventually took down all mentioning of the extension from their home page within a few months after it was released. Message boards never spoke of .tel again, unless a straggler happened to raise the subject, which returned a handful of “.tel sucks” responses.

Why did .tel fail? Was it because you’re forced to use a pre-existing .tel landing page? Maybe. I think that companies want full control over their content. You’ve got to have some kind of admiration of .tel’s “universality” approach…but, most companies still go with the “m.companyname.com” sub-domain format as their mobile site address – they still don’t bother with .mobi, and certainly haven’t shown any interest in .tel, either.

The more I learn about domain names and read the blogs of famous domainers, the more I know that .com and .net is really where it’s at – everything else is kiddie stuff. Unless we’re talking about premium ccTLDs in their respective foreign languages, I see little value in registering anything other than a one-word, super generic domain name of any extension…that goes for .me, .tel, .info, .us and the rest.

Remember, if a professional domain name broker (or bidder for that matter) doesn’t show interest in a domain name extension – then, neither should you!