DOMAINfest Global 2011 Wrap-up
Members of our .SiTE team were in attendance at the fifth annual DOMAINfest event held in Santa Monica Last week (Feb. 1st – 3rd), where a record number of attendees (715) from all over the world gathered to share ideas on buying/selling domains, monetization strategies, SEO and traffic optimization, trends in the industry, and yes, even New gTLDs. Here is a short list of things that left an impression on us.
Presentation: Internet Vital Signs
Eli Goodman of comScore captivated the audience with his presentation “Internet Vital Signs.” The presentation focused on three important topics; search, mobile, and e-commerce. Here are a few quick snippets from the presentation:
- The U.S. now only accounts for 14% of the total Internet population
- U.S. search saw a 23% year over year growth with medium and light users using search more and more often
- 77% of mobile users still do not make online purchase from their phones
- Groupon experienced 657% year over year growth
- Only 5% of those recently surveyed say they were influenced by social media to purchase a particular product
Presentation: State of the Industry: 2011 and Beyond
Jeff Kupietzky, CEO and President of Oversee.net presented his top 10 predictions for 2011 during is presentation “State of the Industry: 2011 and Beyond.” Jeff predicts several domain sales will be in excess of 5 million dollars as brands look to own category domain names such as; Books.com (Barns and Noble), Baby.com (Johnson & Johnson) and Loans.com (Bank of America).
Keynote: Luck & Perspective by Bob Parsons
Go Daddy Founder and CEO, Bob Parsons gave the Keynote presentation at this years DOMAINfest. His presentation, “Luck & Perspective” took the audience on his entrepreneurial journey of taking big risks that paid off, and his will to persevere through the tough times.
Panel: Opportunities in ccTLDs, IDNs, and New gTLDs
Panelist Adrian Kinderis of AusRegistry International let those few attendees of the session know that it was unacceptable that the room was only half full as this topic impacts everybody.
Panelists suggested that consumers would easily adapt to New gTLDs and get accustomed to seeing brand names on the right side of the dot (for example, .microsoft). Further, New gTLDs presented great benefits for domainers because they can go out and own a whole category, such as .law, and have complete control over the space.
Panel: Buying and Selling Domains
The big take-away from this session was that the experts strongly believe that there is still a strong potential for new-comers and a lot of new growth yet to come.
Michael Berkens, discussed the opportunity for investment in running a New gTLD registry, and reiterated a point from the New gTLD session the previous day, stating that New gTLDs will give investers a chance to play from the other side of the field. Though the potential is huge for speculative investment in New gTLD second-level registrations, .com/.net/.org will not be affected because they have reached a high level of stability.
Fireside Chat with Ben Mezrich, Author of “The Accidental Billionaires”
One of the most impressionable moments of the event was the fireside chat with the writer of the book which the movie, The Social Network was based on. The author, Ben Mezrich, was interview by Oversee.net President and CEO, Jeff Kupietzky. Ben gave an extraordinarily captivating account of his journey writing the book and captivated the audience with his story.
This fireside chat with Ben Mezrich along with Bob Parsons Keynote, and the great information provided by the expert panels made this three day event well worth the flight over the Pacific worth it. We’ll see you next year!
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