Top 5 Reasons Not to Buy IDNs
Here are the top 5 reasons why domain investors stay away from IDNs, and the rebuttals to each:
1. A native would never type an IDN in foreign characters and then .com in Roman characters. IDN.com will be worthless as you don’t have foreign characters on both sides of the dot.
Not true. Dot com is a global brand, Japanese IDN.com for instance is seen as popular and Westernized. Moreover, foreign keyboards make it easy to switch between foreign and Roman characters.
2. Much of the value in IDNs is based on unwarraned speculation that .com’s will be aliased to .IDNs.
Ever since 2005, Verisign has been talking about aliasing IDN.com to IDN.IDN and ICANN’s current hands-off position appears to give registrars license to alias very soon.
3. IDNers have been talking about the next big thing since 2006. Aren’t IDNs the next .mobi?
Absolutely not. There is no need for .mobi as one could just as easily do mobile.mydomain.com. IDNs are not replacable and truly serve a need in communities who value their native languages and who want to use them. Also the ccTLD fast track process has begun this November paving the way for IDN.IDN and IDN.com. The time is now.
4. I don’t know the market or the language and I think I should stick to what I know.
Listen. No one here was born knowing about domains. Learn. Educate yourself. Hiring a translator or finding an autotranslator service isn’t too difficult.
5. I can’t type the foreign characters, I don’t have a foreign keyboard.
Almost no serious IDNer is using a foreign keyboard. Instead just take an English word, translate, copy and paste. Punycode versions of foreign names make it easy to do whois checks and obtain all relevant stats regarding potential purchases.
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shhhh! prices will go up and we won’t keep getting killer deals.
I wonder if you have any usage figures for IDNs? Or for .mobi – will IDNs be the next bubble for hungry domainers? Domainer interest and end-user takeup are not the same thing.
Really .mobi is unnecessary?
Do you think I can have better .com than my record.mobi to build the Mobile Internet Revolution blog? You may suggest using mobile.record.com, but I can’t afford record.com at all.
Good post and I’m totally agree with you. IDN is BS.
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Yes, one could do that. Or one could do m.mydomain.com or mydomain.com/mobile … but none of them give sites owners a zone file entry to ensure better SEO results since .mobi is the only ICANN-recognized and -approved mobile naming convention.
Also, industry convention ensures .mobi sites are automatically white-listed by all network level transcoders, so you can be 100% sure that your site will render as you intended on every mobile device.
Those are just two reasons why a .mobi domain is as relevant and as irreplaceable as IDNs. There are many other reasons that you can read about at http://mtld.mobi/resource/top-5-reasons-why-you-need-a-mobi-name.
@Farid- If you read the post, that isn’t what I’m saying. I think each of the reasons people give as to why not to buy IDNs can be rebutted.
@Vance – Thanks for the comment and for providing a detailed counterpoint.
[...] ".mobi is better than IDN.com". Any intelligent pro-IDN comments would be appreciated… http://idnblog.com/2009/11/27/top-5-…t-to-buy-idns/ __________________ IDN Blog IDN Tools IDN [...]
@ Food Recalls. I have my own traffic information on my own IDN investments and I assure you that they get traffic, clicks and generate revenue from parking. I don’t have any details on .mobi’s however as I do not own any.
I also think that your statement ‘Domainer interest and end-user takeup are not the same thing.’ is a very valid point. Any particular IDN needs to be evaluated in context of the language and market that it represents. Some languages/markets will experience end-user takeup ie. use, earlier and stronger than others. In the markets that my IDN investmests represent this is already happening and it will continue to happen.
I think it was unwise to attempt to paint any parallels between IDN’s and .mobi in point 3. It is like comparing apples to oranges. They are two different things serving different markets.
Just for interest I took a look at yesterday’s stats. As an example パース.com recieved a $2.14 click. This domain is in Japanese and translates as ‘Perth’ So as you can see not a bad GEO but not a super good one and certainly not my best domain.
@vance Congratulations on .mobi being the “only ICANN-recognized and -approved [buzzword] naming convention”
It joins other buzzword EPIC FAIL’s like .pro .museum and .name
You have a solution to a problem that never existed. How many .mobi’s are registered? All teh mobile specific sites I see advertised are all at m.example.com
@max you domain name record.mobi is SO COOL! Man, I wish I had that domain. It must be the coolest .mobi out there! YOU ROCK!
@Vance
I have been hearing about .mobi since their launch but I don’t remember anyone mentioning these 2 points before. Any suggestions on how I can do further research on what you say? Mobile cultures can vary dramatically from country to country so you can never be sure what might give any given project an edge.
@clotho,
where are you parking your idn’s?
best.
@Vance – the hyperlink in your post included a “.” at the end. If you quickly copy and paste the URL into your browser it ends up resulting in an “not found” page. Here’s an edited link without the “.”:
http://mtld.mobi/resource/top-5-reasons-why-you-need-a-mobi-name
@Clotho – You are correct in that IDN and .mobi are two different markets. Sometimes I think blog posts include negative references to .mobi in order to draw more interest and comments. Or, because the extension is sometimes misunderstood and often underestimated, it seems like an easy target to try to make a point.
When ever I see blog posts and comments like that I wonder if those people actually realize or are even aware of the ongoing, increasing number of known companies that are using .mobi in their mobile web presence. Here’s a nice sample of the type of companies using a .mobi address in addition to their .com, etc:
http://mobisite.org/famousbrands.html
You just don’t see that kind of effort to use any other extension in addition to their main .com website aside from relevant country code TLDs.
Interestingly enough there is a combination of the two coming starting with the recent introduction of first Chinese IDNs in .mobi.
“Here at dotMobi, we’ve been so busy preparing for the availability of our new Chinese IDN / keywords bundle next week …” >>>
http://dotmobi.mobi/node/1618
Maybe Vance could elaborate on that further.
The mobile web is going to be huge as can be IDN adoption. There’s room for both camps to flourish in the BIG ever-growing pie that is the internet.
Best wishes to both.
Currently I am using Namedrive for parking.
Great article. Thank you for posting, it give me better understanding about IDN domain name.