TechImpact / it happens there first

2008 if nothing else was dramatic. Businesses that survived found themselves facing new challenges. Finding new venues to attract customers was not one of them. The internet had developed into a myriad of ways where adventuresome businesses could sift out gold. Of course, with every gold mine, you have a few lucky people walking out of the mine with gold, and hundreds of others making their gold by selling mining tools. Search Engine Marketing continues to grow into a massive business, attracting everything from hard-core data analysts to snake oil sales men. Unfortunately, many of the SEM companies I have had the pleasure of working with, fell well into the later category.

by Chris Gamble

Television, newspaper, billboards, old marketing. Today, users spend 40+ hours a week in front of a computer, many of those hours find themselves filled with web page after web page. So how do you get users attention, stand out from the millions of web sites each vying for 5 seconds attention?

by Chris Gamble

A few weeks ago, I received dozen calls from customers / domain name owners, each with the same question : "Do I really loose my domain name if I don't register for this new China based name?"

In their defense, the letter to register your brand new .cn name to protect your companies brand and reputation was well enough written that anyone might believe their intellectual property was in danger. I'll admit that I had to read it twice to make sure.

That was last week. Skip to next year when ICANN puts up hundreds of top level domains for sell. A top level domain is the far right side of your domain name. Top level domains (TLD) are currently limited to country specific (including the popular .TV domain), or to define organization type. The organization domains are .COM, .ORG, .NET, and .INFO. This isn't an exhaustive list, but hopefully enough to give you an idea of what is up for sale.

The price and rules for these new domains has not been approved, but pricing is expected to be around $100,000 dollars, with a list of rules to approve a new TLD intended to prevent offending any government body. With censorship and high cost, it would be safe to expect that a limited number of new TLD's will pop up when this starts, and pre-internet ages that would be a fair expectation. Of course, we are in an age where a single domain name can auction for ten times that value. I doubt any rules will be enough to adequately deter the wave of speculators and investors that are sure to be waiting, cash and names in hand. Each with a business plan that is able to explain to every domain name owner they look up how their new internet real-estate is as valuable if not more valuable than the venerable .COM. One year and one month from now, I expect chaos, and a hundred letters a day selling me my name internet presence.

Until then, I will continue to advise clients and friends alike -- build a brand and don't sweat the imitators. Even before the new TLD's, there are too many synonyms, misspellings, and number for letter replacements that 1t's practically impossible to lock down every one. So what is building a brand in the internet age? With all these names are in existence, and so many more about to sprout, search engine optimization (seo) will become essential to the next round of internet branding.

by Chris Gamble