IDNs — The Trend is Your Friend
Bill Winans writes:
“”Hi Frank, here’s a good article from CNN for your front page.”"
http://edition.cnn.com/2007/BUSINESS/11/11/digital.domain/index.html
Quote: “”Suppose that the Internet had been invented in Thailand, and that every Web address ended with three letters in the Thai alphabet that you needed to type out. Allowing URLs in non-English language formats may spur a new wave of Internet usage, analysts say. In such a scenario, people who speak and read only English (or another language) would be dissuaded from using and exploring the Internet, and creating things on it….”"
***FS*** IDN’s will certainly bring an epoch-like shft in regional markets .. But there will be the splinterization effect as CCTLD’s in local languages compete with GTLDs in local languages which compete with IDN domains in possible ASCII character extensions (in both GTLD and CCTLD variants) .. it’s a mess.. A beautiful mess with a lot of opportunities for savvy domainers to make money.. but a mess I’m steering clear of for the time being.
In the final analysis.. the “Trend is your friend” and in our lifetimes all roads lead to English as the Language people communicate in globally.. I’ll buy IDN’s 10 years after simplified Chinese becomes a mandatory grade-school subject in Europe, USA, Mexico and South America.
I understand and accept that lots of IDN millionairs will be minted by then.. So if you speak the language, go gettem folks.
[...] sure to read Franky’s view on IDN [...]
“in our lifetimes all roads lead to English as the Language people communicate in globally”
Frank, for someone so astute this is just astoundingly myopic thinking. I challenge you to visit any of the top Chinese consumer facing websites and show us where they are communicating with their target audience in the English language.
Morgan Stanley predicts that by 2010, just three short years from now, China will leapfrog the rest of the industrial world to take top spot in market sizing of global Technology, Media & Telecommunications (TMT) products and services. Most analysts predict that the online native language Chinese speaking population will surpass the online native language English population by 2011 at the latest. The logic is inescapable: China has more consumers than any other country, and the Internet will reach more Chinese consumers than any other channel. The rising consumption power of the Chinese consumer is up for grabs and those that seize the digital high ground stand to reap enormous rewards.
***FS*** They won’t have the world marching to the middle-kingdom by having them speak Chinese .. Ascii characters will take us there. Although they will speak Chinese.
This might happen in parts of Europe as soon as 10 years from now. China’s economic phenomenon has arisen largely without the need to write or speak English for 95% of the population. Go to IDNF and you will see all the crap post using online translators and laugh your guts out.
The rise of the English Language have been the consequence of the Global Hegemony of first the British and then the Americans. The British Empire is dead and the American style Neo-Colonialism won’t be far behind. To analyse where this is going you just need to study the growth of online content and where most user are coming on line, and the economic shift that is occurring.
I am sure somebody is about to point out the Dead Cat bounce in the dollar this last couple of days, but such observations would lack serious analysis. What we have seen in the last day or two is in many ways more worrying. The Yen is going home. The biggest losses have been made by the Australian and New Zealand dollars because that is where most of the Yen “Carry Trade” has occurred. The Pound has also suffered badly.
Where has this money gone, well back to Japan, and as a consequence of Fractional Reserve Lending most of it will simply evaporate into the Ether, as most of this virtual money will return to whence it came.
For the United States which is trying to finance massive twin debts in the middle of a credit crunch this is very bad news indeed. The only real options will soon become apparent, which are either to raise interest rates significantly to attract investment from abroad throwing the economy into recession or to print a lot more dollars, letting the Inflation Genie out the box. Either way it will greatly accelerate the pace at which China goes flying by in the fast lane, with India in the slipstream.
We have already seen the value of Chinese money in the purchase of DIY.net. Things can only get a lot hotter when they start doing battle over their own markets and heritage.
Hi Frank:
After reading your blog post, it dawned on me that there are about as many languages (10,000) in the world as there are full-time domainers (10,000+) worldwide. Just food for thought.
All the best,
Steve Smith
InsideDomaining.com
[...] CNN discusses the future IDNs. IDNs present a great opportunity for domainers with the skills to exploit them. Frank Schilling posts his response to this article, here [...]
Frank i like your last line about “if you speak the language go get em folks”
But i would like to add , If you know how to park a domain go get em , if you know how to outsource go get em , if you know how to hold and then resale to a end user go get em ! There is a plethora of options just like holding English domains.
Great read thanks for posting.
The perception you need to speak the language is totally false.
The great realisation that I made when I got into this game, is that you don’t have to be a linguist to find single characters or single words. I cannot string a sentence together in any of the languages I have invested in. Indeed I cannot really recognise more than a handful our domains without reference to our database.
However, at IDNFs we have a broad base of native speakers of many languages and few would contest the fact that we have one of the best portfolios of domains out there. We are invested in about 20 languages. In many of those languages where we took chances and got in early we have equivalents of some of the Landmark ASCII sales.
The idea that you need to learn the language is totally false. Anyway, if you permit me a little marketing, we have one of the top Chinese Provinces up in the Live Auction at Associated Cities at a very reasonable reserve. This domain has not only been verified by Moniker, but you can rest assured that it won’t be overshadowed by dot CN or its is Unicode Alias, because the Chinese have reserved all these Geographical terms, and will even reclaim them if you manage to beat the system.
Furthermore, whilst it has not been publicly stated that Verisign will get what it wants in terms of aliased extensions, the battle is going to be between a lot hypothetical registry organisations, and the likes of Verisign, Affilias and Neustar, who comprise most of the GNSO Committee that is working on the policy and will approve the applications. Working out where this is going should therefore be a no brainer!
On the subject of attracting the World to China’s door, that really is not the concept. They are already fairly successful at that, and they use ASCII dot com for that purpose. Nearly all major online companies use dot com as a matter of prestige, the same is true of Japan. The market we are after is the internal Chinese market which will soon be the most important in the entire World. Just as America has for many year focused very closely on its own internal development, you may expect China to become much more introspective than it is now. The main focus of the larger corporations will be to serve the domestic market. Even now the export market is really only a small percentage of the total economy.
Perhaps, you are one of the few people that can really afford to sit this one out. I don’t doubt that getting involved in IDN will not revolutionise you life in the way that your original investments in ASCII did, it is nevertheless a major investment opportunity that should not lightly be passed over.
“they won’t have the world marching to the middle-kingdom by having them speak Chinese”
Huh? Frank, put together a list of your top 100 direct navigation domains. Run reports on how many Chinese consumers are direct navigating to them. I think we can safely assume that number is less than 1%. Take that same list and show it to a random sampling of Chinese consumers in affluent cities like Shanghai and ask them what the words mean. Again, you’re going to find most people have no idea.
Next give them the same list in Hanzi characters. Revelation! They speak and write their own language! I mean, come on. Why in the world would domain names somehow escape language barriers?! Why in the world would Chinese consumers continue to navigate in meaningless roman character domain names when suddenly they have meaningful domains?
***FS*** What I meant is, the rest of the world won’t be beating a path to their door… the Aarabic won’t type Chinese and the Chinese won’t type Cyrillic and the Russians won’t type farsi or simplified chinese.. English is the settlement language of the world.. so I play in ASCII .. not saying you can’t make a buck.. but it’s easier to get existing ascii coms than it is to change the way the world thinks
I will confess my ignorance here as to the keyboard configuration commonly used in, say, Thailand. While I have seen the entry methods used to “type” in Chinese on 121 key ASCII keyboards, I will confess my ignorance as to the degree of adoption of all of these various scripts down to the hardware that people are using to access the internet. Perhaps someone can enlighten me here, but there is more than “cultural hegemony” at work in the available range of basic user I/O hardware.
This discussion seems so theoretical, but no one seems to mention that IDNs have been available since 2000. They are alive and well on the internet today. Also, it seems that y’all think IDNs are only Japanese and Chinese? Russian (Cyrillic) domains get a LOT of traffic now. French and Spanish IDNs get a lot of traffic now. I think that most US domainers can handle French, Spanish, and other Latinate language domain names. With a little practice, Greek & Russian domain names are not difficult to pick up. Give it a try….
Morgan Stanley predicts that by 2010, just three short years from now, China will leapfrog the rest of the industrial world to take top spot in market sizing of global Technology, Media & Telecommunications (TMT) products and services. Most analysts predict that the online native language Chinese speaking population will surpass the online native language English population by 2011 at the latest. The logic is inescapable: China has more consumers than any other country.
Here are some other facts by Goldman Sachs,UN,World bank and few others on south east asia region.
India has only 50 million internet users today with a population of 1.2 billions its only 4.5% of internet penetration. Its growing at approx. 1200% anually. With 375-400 mil potential users in the waiting to come online. 95% of users speak and write “English”.
So approx 350 mil english speaking people,hence English still the top navigated language in the world not Chinese. Not to forget the fact that India ‘ll be worlds most populated country in just 15+yrs, since China has somewhat controlled its population growth. India being a democratic country you are free to have as many little ones you want.
Nonetheless opportonuties in local languages and markets.
BTW Frank love your posts.
Thanks
Ken b
Ken B thanks for your, how shall we say, excessive admiration of my post over at Sahar’s blog.
Frank my point was precisely, and this may be ignorance on my part, that the vast amount of your direct navigation $ are from native language English speakers. At least that would be my assumption. It stands to reason that consumers whose native language is something other than English, will, once IDN domains tip, direct navigate the internet in their own language. And further, again, that as the Chinese economy is about to rival the native English speaking world economy these are valuable consumers. And we’re not talking twenty years but five.
As for the lingua franca of the business world being English, that’s tied directly to economic might. Hence your business success today. Hence IDN domainers busines success tomorrow.
Here’s a glimpse of the future:
http://youtube.com/watch?v=NHUD10tVgFg
***FS*** English is the settlement language of the world..
So what?
Recycle.co.uk sold for $314,249.28 – http://www.allheadlinenews.com/articles/7009107916. How many non-Brit will type a .co.uk at least once a day, or even once a week? I registered the chinese version of recycling.com two years ago for $6.95. And to think that China is already a larger market than the UK in almost all product categories.
Isn’t investment about getting into the stuff before the rest of the market sees it??
***FS*** but it’s easier to get existing ascii coms than it is to change the way the world thinks
Change the way the world thinks? Or change the way mainstream domainers think? There’s no need to change the way domainers think, the demand will come from local end users.
Certainly Frank you will have a change of heart regarding IDNs….. China could do without the rest of the world considering they have over a billion people. The U.S. only has a few hundred million people.
Recently the number of internet users in China has rised over America’s….. Let’s see what language will be the dominant champ by 2011-2012.
John,
The availability of keyboards with local characters is only an issue in India, as far as I am aware. Here they are developing, and my already be distributing 12 script keyboards. You simply toggle between scripts as you already do in just about every other non-English speaking country.
Ken,
There has been huge amounts of arguments about the level of English use in India. The Indian government own estimates of how many people will predominantly access the Internet in English vary between 3-5%. Many people argue about these figure including “locals”, but what you cannot argue with is the massive surge in mobile and online services in Hindi being provided by large American Corporations. Surely they would not have bothered if it were just an issue of educating an illiterate minority.
It boils down not to much what people can manage, as what they will chose to use. As the proponents of the Internet in the US keep reminding us, the Internet is about choice.
Frank,
You are right about Arabs not typing Chinese, and Russians not typing Arabic, although oddly a lot Google tracks a lot of my Arabic traffic to Russia. You are talking about the B2B market. It is all yours, with my pleasure. I am targeting the Consumer market, which will be nearly all mine!
[...] public company on the local internet, yet they do not seem to have embraced local languages yet. Frank Schilling points out the decrease in smaller languages and the globalization of English. In the end, however, there [...]
Thats all well and good but how does one know what terms are used in each country unless they speak the language? Are you just converting english search terms into IDNs and regging them or are you working out what each country joe soap searches for? If so where can this info be found? Is there a IDN equiv for wordtracker,etc..?
Cheers from Dublin,
Alan
Alan, to search popularity there is Overture for many languages. In Russia it is wordstat/yandex.
There are tons of good free online dictionaries. A huge list of free resources and lists of idn sales can be found at idntools.net.
Many register IDNs at Dynadot where you have a 4 day grace period to drop. After registering many will post them up at places like IDNForums or DNForums for appraisal by native speakers. The international IDN community is very active and friendly.
Hey Alan , Come on over to http://IDNForums.com
All the tools and information can be found there.
“Is there a IDN equiv for wordtracker,etc..?”
I hope you aren’t serious…. Most of the world does not speak english. It is very easy to tell what is useful in each country by using the native overture tool.(Japan, Hong Kong, Russia(Yandex), etc)
I have top IDNs related to Cars, pets, hotels..
I agree there is tremendous opportunities in both ccTLDs and IDNs, but that it’s a difficult market to navigate. Like Ken, I have gravitated to the Indian market as the best of both worlds. .in is the only ccTLD that I’ve invested in heavily, because the educated class in India commonly speaks English and it is a massive, emerging market. I think these will pay off hugely in 5 years.