.BlackFriday domain names will soon be available. Will they be useful?
It’s Black Friday in the United States, the day that kicks off the holiday shopping season.
Frank Schilling’s Uniregistry applied to run the .blackfriday top level domain name. It’s possible this domain will be available by Black Friday 2014 despite a very poor priority draw number of 1415.
This is a unique domain in that it is targeted to a short period of time during the year; perhaps one or two weeks.
Here’s how the company describes .blackfriday in its application:
Black Friday is the biggest shopping day of the year in the United States. .BLACKFRIDAY domain names will be among the best labels for businesses hoping to capture the attention of shoppers on this exceptional shopping day after United States Thanksgiving…
…Uniregistry will offer .BLACKFRIDAY as an intuitively relevant top-level domain serving registrants seeking to provide information about sales on the day after United States Thanksgiving.
I see a couple categories for .blackfriday domains. One is existing retailers or brands, the other is “generic” uses such as deals.blackfriday or electronics.blackfriday.
The big question I have for the first category is why Best Buy or Walmart would want a .blackfriday domain such as bestbuy.blackfriday. If you go to any of their sites today, it’s plastered with Black Friday. Come Monday it will focus on Cyber Monday.
Why would you want a different website for Black Friday? It makes little sense to me for retailers to own a separate .blackfriday domain and run a separate website.
Will they defensively register the domain? I bet they will, especially with how some retailers have fought off sites that scoop their Black Friday sales early.
I just don’t see a constructive use for these retailers. It will be interesting to see how this TLD plays out.
Robbie says
I think they risk losing traffic due to mis types etc, I see no advantage, as it is a known fact, every retailer basically has to participate in black friday to stay in the mix, the generic .com websites or home pages are all you need.
balentine says
Agreed. Yet another gtld fail.
Tony says
Probably better to use say walmart.com/blackfriday than walmart.blackfriday. The latter diverts traffic away from the main site. I get why FS likes the gTLDs since he knows what people type in and search for but what retailers decide to do is a different animal.
john says
If they’re smart they will buy BlackFriday.com.
ChuckWagen says
Tony you are spot on. On the subject of defensive registrations, isn’t that the reason for the trademark clearinghouse?
todd says
.flop
stuart walker says
.gimmick
George Minardos says
The question really is how many people does it take to make a .blackfriday domain profitable. They wll get used, and if enough users get value they will be sustainable. Everyone loves a deal, no matter what social strata.
Yogi B. says
Definitely not. Who is gonna type all of that in? Not me. If a domain is 1 character longer than necessary, I won’t be visiting. Or patronizing. Or registering. The gtld’s are stupid and will never catch on for that reason. Also, that is why .aero, .travel, .museum, .jobs, .mobi, .coop, .name, and .info never had a snowball’s chance.
JZ says
just another waste of space. retailers put black friday ads on their main site for a reason, it gets all the traffic, not just some. just another waste of space new gtld among many.
Michael Dance says
I take it some people don’t realise you can redirect domains to a page on their site. eg: domains.blackfriday –> domainnamewire.com/blackfriday/
Mike Ursitti says
I’ve been searching for anyone actually using .blackfriday and can’t find a single domainname in use. Even the example above bestbuy.blackfriday doesn’t resolve.
Andrew Allemann says
https://www.google.com/webhp?sourceid=chrome-instant&ion=1&espv=2&ie=UTF-8#q=site%3A.blackfriday