RE: UKNM: Real Names

[Elizabeth Van Couvering]

The thing about RealNames, from my point of view (not speaking as official

Excite here) -- what happens when a bunch of people want to be joe's diner?

The domain names structure takes care of this by adding heirarchical

suffixes for geographical location and (sometimes) for type of organisation

(so pentagon clothing can be distinguished from the Pentagon).  However,

RealNames removes this feature.  It's like they're shortening the lifespan

of the product, just when these kind of issues are coming to the fore in

other ways.  I'm just not convinced.


E.


> -----Original Message-----

>

From: ownerchinwag [dot] com [ownerchinwag [dot] com]On">mailto:ownerchinwag [dot] com]On Behalf Of Mike

> Bracken

> Sent: 06 June 1998 16:43

>

To: uk-netmarketingchinwag [dot] com

> Subject: Re: UKNM: Real Names

>

>

> It seems to me that RealNames has as many marketing and

> perception problems

> as technical ones. Another service - go.com IIRC - launched at roughly the

> same time and got loads of attention despite having a much poorer

> service -

> it's essentially a dutch auction for preferential listings.

>

> Although they've got a deal with AltaVista, which at least gives them some

> publicity but isn't too good financially, they really need to get deals

> with other 'portals' to establish a de facto standard, but as was rightly

> pointed out, there's nothing technical to stop others doing this.

>

> I doubt that even if there was a widespread take-up of RealNames in the UK

> and Europe whether this would influence the bigger picture enough to make

> it popular with Yahoo, Netscape et al. Hypothetical I know, but

> would it be

> worth any marketing spend if it didn't really take-off in the US but did

> here?

>

> Mike

>

>

>

> > Real Names has a serious problem, the idea is simple and can easily be

> > copied (heck the code is a simple database lookup and redirect).

> >

> > Shame really,

>

>