The following information about symbol domain names marketability is presented in a Q & A format.
What importance does having a symbol domain name have over a current domain name?
A Latin based domain name is fine provided that it is instantly recognized, memorable, and is easy to access by customers.
Clearly, long domain names like "thisismybusinessonline.com" are difficult for customers to remember, hard to type, and provide limited access to Global markets. This is important if part of your market is in other than English speaking countries.
Additionally, domain names with the fewest characters are easier to remember. While this appears intuitively obvious, it has been a subject of scientific study.
For example, cognitive processing studies done by Sperling (1960 -- Sperling's Paradigm -- Psychological Monographs, 74, 1-29) have shown that the fewer characters shown to a viewer, the better the retention by the viewer. This effect is known as "Span of comprehension". Please review:
As such, three and four character domain names are ideal for customer retention.
This is the reason why long numbers, such as those found on credit cards, phone numbers, driver's licenses, bank accounts, social security numbers, and so on, are broken into smaller groups of three and four digits. This makes for easier short-term retention, when copying long numbers from the visual to physical (i.e., keypads, notes, etc.).
However, at present you can't register a three-character Latin char-set domain name, let alone a single character domain name.
In fact, considering that there are over 30 million domain names already registered, there are only two single-character dot-com domain names currently in use, which are: q.com (Quest Communications), and x.com (PayPal Corporation).
All other single character domain names (in the Latin char-set) are simply not available. So, single-character domain names are exceedingly rare.
How does having a "symbol dot-com" domain name help us?
Besides the aforementioned recognition benefits, in the global scheme of things, most user browsers (Internet Explorer, Netscape, Safari) have extended character sets representative of the respective language of the user. Accompanying those characters sets will be non-specific-language character sets such as the Mathematics, Greek and Dingbat character sets. These sets are universal and common to all languages.
Having a symbol domain name that appears to be common to all known languages makes perfect sense when trying to establish a consistent and easily recognizable global Internet presence. For it's been demonstrated that the higher the reconcilability of the company, the better reception and participation it receives from its customers.
Additionally, doing Internet business with a dot-com name is preferable to all other TLD's (Top Level Domain). After all, the dot-com TLD designation is for commercial interest, and is by far the most popular. This fact is reflected in the shear number of registered domains with dot-coms exceeding 25 million, whereas dot-org and dot-net are trailing with 4 and 3 million respectively. All other TLD's fall far short of those numbers.
Won't the Latin character set be available to all Internet users?
Perhaps, provided: that the respective country allows the English character set to be used (not all will); and the user is familiar with the English language (not all are).
Aside from those considerations, there is no reason to believe that the Latin character set won't be a staple character set in most browsers. However, the aforementioned symbol character sets will most certainly be included, regardless of the country's political concerns and the ability of the user to understand English -- and therein lies the potential.
What potential?
Any company considering the global Internet market must seriously consider every opportunity for widening their customer base.
Using a domain name common to all languages and is most likely to appear in every browser, on every machine, in every language, in every country of the world provides enormous potential.
Can these domains be used today?
Yes, these symbol domains can be used today. But most ISP's have not yet incorporated the new convention into their systems. It is only a matter of time, however, IP's are coming up to speed fast to meet multilingual user needs.
Also, the makers of Internet Explorer, Netscape and Safari have already incorporated these extended character sets into their browsers.
Plus, the makers of the world's largest personal computer operating systems (i.e., Windows and Macintosh) have already made significant strides in incorporating Unicode character sets into their software. To see even more support from the technology industry, review Unicode standards. Clearly Unicode is the "wave of the future" and, it is now.
The efforts of ICANN and VeriSign® to extend the current character set should be applauded because their efforts now allow the rest of the world, in their own respective language, to participate in the Internet. This is not a small contribution, and it presents companies, with vision, enormous opportunity.
Isn't this cybersquating?
No, this is not cybersquating. On November 29, 1999, President Clinton signed into law the "Anticybersquatting Consumer Protection Act" (ACPA). This law adds section 43(d) to the U.S. Trademark Act of 1946 and creates a cause of action for "cybersquatting" on famous trademarks.
The ACPA also creates a federal cause of action for cybersquatting on a person's name without his or her permission. As defined, cybersquating is infringing upon trademarks and preventing a company, or individual, from establishing an Internet presence via their name.
Clearly, this proposal is not cybersquating because the symbols we are presenting are common public domain symbols, and are not trademarked, nor is any company being denied Internet presence.
So then, are you trying to sell symbol domain names?
Yes, we believe that a company with global interest should seriously consider purchasing or leasing a symbol domain name. These domain names provide excellent vehicles for easy global recognition.
It is clear that the Internet is going to be around for quite some time. The world is logging on at an ever-expanding rate. Now is the time to determine what your company is going to do tomorrow to better position itself within the new global Internet market.
Please seriously consider the potential of this proposal in expanding your customer base by adding a "Symbol Domain" name to your company's image.
References:
ICANN-- Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers:
VeriSign® Global Registry Services:
http://www.verisign.com/The Unicode Consortium is a non-profit organization founded to develop, extend and promote use of the Unicode Standard:
http://www.unicode.orgVerisign® is a registered trademark of Verisign, Inc.
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