The ICANNblog

Domainer Industry Alive and Thriving at T.R.A.F.F.I.C.

October 17th, 2007

By Chuck Kisselburg

ICANNWiki.org

Last week I attended T.R.A.F.F.I.C. East, held just north of Miami. The brainchild of Rick Schwartz and Howard Neu the conference was very well attended by domainers, parking firms, registrars and other companies from around the globe. While this is T.R.A.F.F.I.C.’s ninth conference, the success of this conference continues to underline the need for organized conferences for this segment of the Internet industry. New to the family is John Epp, T.R.A.F.F.I.C.’s new Executive Director.

As with my blog after the Domain Roundtable, this conference was made up of a solid group of entrepreneurs.

The format of T.R.A.F.F.I.C. continues to be seminars with industry experts along with healthy amounts of time set aside for networking and developing relationships/partnerships. The conference ended with an auction of domains.

In attending the sessions and talking with people during each of the networking events, I heard a couple of themes:

1). Transparency

2). Development

3). Code of ethics

4). Representation

1). Transparency: There appears to be a growing need within the domainer community for there to be greater transparency with the parking companies. The reason behind this is as Google and Yahoo have driven down the costs associated with advertising clicks, owners of parked domains are, on an average, seeing decreasing revenues on their investments. The only thing this points to are the parking companies and how much money might be staying with these companies. As such parking companies are seeing the need for becoming more transparent regarding costs associated with managing parked domains.

2). Development: Almost every domainer at the conference wishes to develop, where possible, their domains. Realistically it will be difficult for a domainer to develop all of their domains as it takes time and resources to develop even one domain. Think of development as creating and executing a business plan. Also note that while some may think of a domainer as owning huge amounts of domain names, in truth there are domainers present who own a small number. However, everyone sees the value of developing their domains. True, it does increase the value of their domain, but people really want to utilize their domains where they are actually providing value to the end user.

I had the pleasure of talking with quite a few people at this conference and found those in attendance spanned the gamut of domaining and development. On one extreme I talked with one person who is all about domain tasting. He “tastes” anywhere from 35,000 to 40,000 domains a day. On the other extreme a former CEO, who has a small portfolio of domains, wishes to create a full blown business with each domain. With the exception of the one domain taster in attendance, everyone wanted to develop their domains as much as possible. I also heard LOUD AND CLEAR that people are really against the concept and practice of domain tasting.

3). Code of ethics: As this community continues to evolve, domainers, and the organizations that support them, feel they have been tainted by the activity of a minority, and that deals with “tasting”, “kiting” and “cybersquatting”. There is a strong current to help further define this community through the establishment of standards as well as a code of ethics. This means that not only should there be a code of ethics for domainers, there should also be a code of ethics for registrars and parking companies, with the goal being to set the standard as well as weed out those who don’t “pass the grade”.

4). Representation: There is a strong undercurrent that those of this community are not listened to by ICANN. When ever I ask a simple question about this I can usually get blasted with a cadre of examples. You can tell the frustration level is quite high. There is work to be done, but I strongly feel that with open communication ICANN and the domainer community can work together. Aside from ICANNWiki being able to provide a platform for communication among those who fall within the overall ICANN community, the Internet Commerce Association, or the ICA, has gained heavy support from the various groups attending T.R.A.F.F.I.C. to be the official association to work with ICANN to ensure the domainer community is represented and heard. Personally speaking, I see the need for ICANN to have representation at each of these domainer conferences as this can only help continue the conversations and mutual education.

For those reading this blog who don’t live within the domainer’s world, here are a couple of blogs to view:

Frager Factor

Conceptualist.com

Seven Mile

Ron Jackson’s Blog

Whizzbangsblog.com

Rick’s blog

Jay Westerdal’s blog

The keynote speaker to the conference was Steve Forbes. Steve’s speech centered around the entrepreneurial spirit and how such spirit created turbulence over the centuries, however, each time such entrepreneurs help define the industry. The domainer community is in such a space where they are working in a world that is still very young, helping to create and shape the industry.

One of the “Ah-Ha” moments for me was hearing where one organization, who has a sizeable domain portfolio, found it best to “park” their domains due to the “traditional” way the financial world views the domainer world. In other words, investors don’t look at the “value” of what developed domains can bring. Instead investors look at the historical data of what domains have sold for as well as what money the domains are bringing in today. Thus, when working with the financial world, it appears best to park domains instead of develop the domain.

As mentioned earlier, T.R.A.F.F.I.C. continues to grow, thus showing the need for such events. It was mentioned today that Fabulous.com will be the first organization to be a licensee of T.R.A.F.F.I.C. and is now slated to hold a T.R.A.F.F.I.C. conference in Australia in November of 2008.

Entry Filed under: Site News, People, TLDs, domaining, Business Strategy, Parking, Registrars