When Vincent broke the news of a Facebook ad by Minds+Machines on Twitter, the resulting reaction was 100% as expected.
The ad itself was a quick attempt at being provocative, because no-one in their right mind would believe that the .com name space is truly dead.
However, there is this underlying fear among the folks who simply refuse to experience the change of the domain name space, that triggers a reaction to even obvious “trolling” ads.
Such ads have been used for years by every phone company on the planet, targeting competitors: Verizon does it against AT&T, T-Mobile does it against Verizon, Sprint does it against T-Mobile.
This is all non-news to me.
What is news, however, is that the domain industry that appeared to be a digital sea of tranquility with a unified direction, is about to be stirred into a Pacific ocean of disturbance.
I expect the game of such “guerrilla marketing” to become stronger and bigger, particularly as more gTLDs get ICANN approval. The expansion of the domain name space is creating a multi-billion dollar market, far and beyond anything experienced by the average Joe Domainer.
I am not bothered by the ad placed by Minds+Machines, nor scared about a supposed collapse of the dot .com.
I am bothered, however, by the obsessive close-mindedness of those that refuse to see a change in reality, which incorporates the single biggest domain expansion since the creation of the Internet.
I don’t see how .com can not be affected but the new gtlds. The domain landscape is going to change dramatically over the next 5 to 10 years where .com won’t be as relevant as it used to be.