In a not so surprising move, retailer Overstock has decided that changing its name to O.co was not a good business move and that they “moved too fast”. According to Advertising Age,
“The online retailer’s president, Jonathon Johnson, said it is stepping back from the O.co name “for now,” though not abandoning it outright. Overstock will still use the O.co name internationally and on mobile efforts, including an iPad app that launches today. And the sign on the “O.co Coliseum,” the home of the Oakland Raiders and the Oakland Athletics, will stay up.
Confused? So were customers. Mr. Johnson said customers responded well to the O.co advertising, but after watching the spots, “a good portion” of those who sought out the website went to O.com, instead of O.co. (O.com is one of the off-the-market single letter domain names still held by ICANN.)
“We were going too fast and people were confused, which told us we didn’t do a good job,” Mr. Johnson said. “We’re still focused on getting to O.co, just at a slower pace. … We’re not flipping back, we’re just refocusing.”
It is a problem with all dot co domains. Most people still see dot com instead of dot co. While many feel that this will change in the future as do co becomes more familiar, the reality of the present is all dot co domains will bleed traffic to the dot com. Most likely this “take it slow” approach is in really a “wait to see if dot co catches on” or a nice way of abandoning it all together. The $350,000 they spent for the domain is a drop in the bucket for their advertising campaign compared to the multi-million dollar expense of their Super Bowl commercial. I don’t see this as a blow to the dot co registry because I don’t think you can truly judge the success (it’s already a success from the registry’s point of view) of dot co for a few more years. In my opinion it is impossible to build a brand on because of the similarity to the dot com but at this point in time, my opinion has been proven in the minority with the millions of registered domains. I am taking the same approach as Overstock and going with the wait and see method.
Read the entire article at Advertising Age
.com is still king
Interesting development. After initially taking no interest in this extension, I bought my first .co only a couple of weeks ago. I thought I’d let it rest there, but I’ve registered a few more since then.
I waded in, now I’ll take a wait-and-see approach.
Overstock’s move, and the reasoning behind it, suggests that waiting (for me) is wise for the time being.
Eric,
I do own two dot co myself. Stump.co and bobo.co. The latter because I thought it sounded great. I felt the rhyme made it memorable. Stump.co was going to be an experiment for our stump removal division. But that’s all I’m going to buy
Yay for .com!!
I put up a site last year: DontBuy.co
It even has references to O.CO and why it was was a big mistake.
This was my very first .co regged and my last…
The site maybe got hacked recently as it must have enraged a .co holder lol
Just go to Google and see the cache of DontBuy.co and read the article I wrote if you want, to see more support for what you’re saying.
The site’s fine now.
This will be like a nuclear bomb for the .co market. Revisit in 12 months to see whatever is left.
.co is still good for development if you can’t afford .com.
I wonder what Robert Cline will say about this development.
Alan,
He’ll likely say nothing or present another convoluted argument. He is years away from stage 5 (acceptance).
CO Registry has done nothing for last few months to promote .co and this is result.
I have few .co`s but do not have any respect for .CO Registry when I see how the work…
You can see the same guy from Colombia who registered `premium`.co`s before others.
Few examples Olga Ramirez (stor), [email protected]
casino, hotel.co, hotels.co,sa.co, tv.co ltd.co,cars.co, 89.co, kr.co, cellphone
or better example as that guy sold recently onlinecasino.co ( [email protected])
loan.co, loans.co, wine.co, wines.co, beer.co,beers.co, restaurant.co
restaurants.co, website.co, websites,mortgages.co, diamond.co, ya.co, book.co, wheather.co, porn.co, erotica.co, table.co, song.co, songs.co, buy, stores.co, organic.co, yes.co, baby.co, babies.co
cruises.co, korea.co, booking.co, ticket.co, cn.co,magazine.co, magazines.co,gift.co, gifts.co,checking, buy
buy.co, search.co, security.co,ask.co, rugs, save.co and many, many more.
All above domains were registered in March 2010.
All for sale, few months ago all were on Sedo.
How many businesses could be build on them? Does it really look .CO Registry care about development by doing that?
I come across interesting things with one cyber squatter.
When I type his domain name I see that he is located in Panama and other time in Colombia.
I have few .co`s but do not have any respect for .CO Registry when I see how they work…
You can see the same guys from Colombia who registered `premium`.co`s before others.
Few examples Olga Ramirez (stor), domains411 at gilinski.com
casino, hotel.co, hotels.co,sa.co, tv.co ltd.co,cars.co, 89.co, kr.co, cellphone
or better example as that guy sold recently onlinecasino.co ( iskia at yahoo.com)
loan.co, loans.co, wine.co, wines.co, beer.co,beers.co, restaurant.co
restaurants.co, website.co, websites,mortgages.co, diamond.co, ya.co, book.co, wheather.co, porn.co, erotica.co, table.co, song.co, songs.co, buy, stores.co, organic.co, yes.co, baby.co, babies.co
cruises.co, korea.co, booking.co, ticket.co, cn.co,magazine.co, magazines.co,gift.co, gifts.co,checking, buy
buy.co, search.co, security.co,ask.co, rugs, save.co and many, many more.
All above domains were registered in March 2010.
All for sale, few months ago all were on Sedo.
How many businesses could be build on them? Does it really look .CO Registry care about development by doing that?
I came across interesting things with one cyber squatter.
When I type his domain name I see that he is located in Panama and other time in Colombia.
CO is powered by Colombia and Colombian government is involved in CO.
Big part of Colombian government is extremely corrupted and this problem is growing in Colombia.
That`s why 50% of all cocaine in the world is produced in Colombia, that`s why cocaine carters doing so well that they even have submarines, that`s why so many people dying from cocaine every year in US an other countries.
Buying .co you support .CO Registry, Registry supports corrupted government, government supports cocaine carters, carters smuggle drugs and kill many innocent people.
Just go to youtube and watch any film about that things.
Karl, it is true that most cocaine is produced in Colombia, but Colombian people do not take drugs themselves, they export it to countries where people is pay big bucks to kill themselves, I am not that sure Colombians are as stupid as you depict them.
It is the same with .co, who is buying most .co? Is it Colombian people or foreigners? I think we all know the answer, so at the end of the day we again know is the most stupid.
Karl,
You are naive. Especially for someone that owns movie3d.biz. If you are going to use that analogy then all Americans are obese and lazy. And I know that’s not true either. It just seems like it here in the Midwest some days
@Karl
Buddy,
What you are saying wreaks of bigotry. If you are insinuating that Colombia is THE symbol for cocaine and to be blamed for all the rampant drug abuse and trafficing around in the States and elsewhere, think again. The problems reach much deeper. It takes two to tango.
.CO is an international business and has nothing to do with what you are talking about. If you want to take a microcosm and make it into a macrocosm, that’s your choice. But nothing could be further from the truth.
Hype the extension and it’ll blow.
@Snoopy – I disagree that this will be a ‘nuclear bomb’ for the .co market. There is still very strong adoption and the .co product is IMHO a good option for a lot of businesses, startups, etc. This news will probably will affect the reseller .co market initially but the folks at .co are smart and adaptive. I bet they will be coming out with another announcement of a big end user adopting their product in the near future.
Not all American obese but its true that its difficult meet so many obese monsters in other countries in the world. People in America also buy most drugs, you have every kinds of crimes, big porn industry….actually every kind of rubbish you can think of.
I would be grateful if you did not call me naive. You are doing this blog for a while so you should finally learn to be more nice to people who has different opinion from yours.
Its big difference between me and you. You are just domainer so most of your time you spend doing not really valuable things. I do many positive things for this world.
Karl,
I apologize for being rude. If you’d read my blog you’d realize I don’t do domaining full time. I grow plants for a living. I sell over a 500,000 plants a year. I have no carbon footprint. And I DO very valuable things every day
“IMHO a good option for a lot of businesses, startups, etc. This news will probably will affect the reseller .co market initially but the folks at .co are smart and adaptive. I bet they will be coming out with another announcement of a big end user adopting their product in the near future.”
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It is now pretty apparent that this is a bad choice, most businesses considering it will be able to see that. Even the main adopter admits it was confusing for customers. The reseller market will tank, as far far as endusers go but there was no real enduser “market” to speak of, a few high profile adoptions with rarely a mention of cash actually changing hands. For those endusers using it look for a shift away over time. It will go back to being seen as a typo extension in my view.
Karl I am an obese, lazy, porn-watching, drug-using American monster.
What does that have to do with anything ? Why don’t you like me ?