Been away for a few days...

...in glorious Devon.

Drove 540 miles on all types of roads, visited cities, towns and villages, went on numerous boat trips, chilled out in beautiful Dartmouth and Salcombe, and during all this time I saw not one single commercial use of .tel in signage.

There were rowing boats and RIBs (rigid inflatable boats) with web addresses on them, loads of shops with them, vans and lorries galore along the way festooned with .co.uk (and some with .com and .net) addresses.

But not one .tel anywhere to be seen - it's as if it doesn't exist !

I suppose I should have my silver BMW Coupe signwritten really - but can't bring myself to do this !

I will however use my new racing dinghy to promote my domain business - just not sure whether I should get .tel signwritten on it or just stick with .com which everybody knows and understands ?

"Joe Public" has no concept, knowledge, appreciation or experience of .tel !

Yet Telnic/Telnames have still not undertaken any serious worldwide, or even national, marketing of the .tel product !

Reminds me of the old joke "I used to be complacent, but now I just can't be bothered !"

Are we all living in a fools paradise, expecting .tel to hit mainstream somehow of it's own accord, or that Telnic/Telnames really are "just about to start" the worldwide marketing which is absolutely essential for .tel's success ?

http://MikeSeaton.tel

Welcome back, Mike! Hopefully you have enjoyed your holiday!
Everybody will understand a website address in the format www.name.com or www.name.tel, doesn't matter which extension will be used.
But you are speaking about the most sensible and also perhaps most important topic at all:
Sadly it is true .tel with only a quarter million registrations is not even existent.
Certainly Telnic is waiting for people like you to start marketing activities, because their strategy was always doing the most minimal effort: Small investment, hoping for big revenues.
.tel itself is a sensational invention and Telnic is completely trusting on this. They are not willing to spend any money for pushing .tel into the market.
And this has become even worse within the years. In 2009 Telnic have still shown some activity.
The fact is we have a great, but underdeveloped product and a stingy provider of it!

Rambo wrote:Welcome back, Mike! Hopefully you have enjoyed your holiday!

Thanks Rambo I did !

Although I have an iPad 2 with 3G I deliberately didn't take it with me, or any other form of internet connection, so it was great to be away from technology for a while.

It did give me time to clear my mind and on coming back I feel more able to see the .tel situation for how it really is.

With the continual refusal of Telnic to spend on the essential worldwide marketing it does look like .tel is heading for a gradual decline (see http://www.teltalk.org/t307-public-interest-registry-hits-10-million-org-domain-registrations#1209) and could easily be viewed as The Greatest Invention The Internet Never Had !

IMO the best bet would be a takeover of the .tel extension by a major player, but I just don't think any of them would be interested.

The second best bet would be Telnic being sold to one of the many cash-rich organisations that are buying up minor gTLDs - they could hardly promote .tel less than it currently is being !

I think the most depressing part of the current situation is that it's "deja vu" - so many of us on TelTalk's forum have posted similar observations a year or so ago on Telnic's forum.

I don't know where .tel goes from here - but it will never succeed by "word of mouth" marketing alone.

Not going to say any more right now !

http://MikeSeaton.tel

mikeseaton wrote:IMO the best bet would be a takeover of the .tel extension by a major player, but I just don't think any of them would be interested.

The second best bet would be Telnic being sold to one of the many cash-rich organisations that are buying up minor gTLDs - they could hardly promote .tel less than it currently is being !

It doesn't have to be a global / major player. A takeover by a smaller business with a more open marketing plan and more development effort would be also an option, e. g. by Webnames.ca, other registrars or companies in the telecommunication sector.
The problem in this case would be that Telnic will ask for a takeover price too high.

mikeseaton wrote:I don't know where .tel goes from here - but it will never succeed by "word of mouth" marketing alone.

True! We only can hope for surprises, e. g. that Telnic
a) pull the strings behind the curtains by establishing contacts to the industry or
b) will finally realize that you are right in this point and become more proactive.

On the other hand surprises can always happen since Telnic is the only provider of a DNS technology so far.
IMHO the probability another company will discover the great potential of the DNS, buy the technology from Telnic and lead it to success is higher than we will see the success of .tel during the management of it by Telnic.
Perhaps the success won't come from the inside but from an external resource which want to use this kind of technology like the CEO Barak Berkowitz from Wolfram Alpha.

Tel wrote:want to use this kind of technology like the CEO Barak Berkowitz from Wolfram Alpha.

That is more a threat than a chance for .tel. Anybody else can just create a competitive product and push .tel into abyss.

TelKing wrote:Anybody else can just create a competitive product and push .tel into abyss.

But .tel is the only TLD using DNS. If somebody wants to do the same, first an application at ICANN is needed. This process takes years.

Or you use one of the new TLDs in the pipeline like .call, .data or .phone.

TelKing wrote:Or you use one of the new TLDs in the pipeline like .call, .data or .phone.

Yes that's certainly an option - USERS DON'T CARE HOW DATA IS STORED - only that the service offers them what they want at a price they are prepared to pay.

If I was attempting to compete with .tel I would produce something along the lines of http://YourBusiness.tel, then set up an API that was incredibly easy for programmers to use and didn't require Open Authorisation since it was Read-Only.

I would also develop an auto-detect mechanism for mobile phones and display the user screens in either Mobile or Laptop/Desktop/Tablet format.

All of this is very easy to do technically - the only question is the mechanism for making it a commercial success.

Do you go for Free Product with Advertising Revenue (such as Google & Facebook) or Chargeable Product with No Advertising ?

Sooner or later .tel is likely to face such a challenge - of course if .tel has established "critical mass" by then it won't matter - but it appears Telnic have no intention of taking the necessary worldwide marketing steps for this to happen !

I've never come across such a "death-wish" situation in all my years in the computer industry !

http://MikeSeaton.tel

mikeseaton wrote:...in glorious Devon.

Drove 540 miles on all types of roads, visited cities, towns and villages, went on numerous boat trips, chilled out in beautiful Dartmouth and Salcombe, and during all this time I saw not one single commercial use of .tel in signage.

I wrote the above post 3 months ago - yet in the intervening time I still have not noticed a single commercial use of .tel in signage.

How the **** will "Joe Public" ever learn about .tel in enough quantity for it to reach the essential "critical mass" ?

http://MikeSeaton.tel

mikeseaton wrote:
I wrote the above post 3 months ago - yet in the intervening time I still have not noticed a single commercial use of .tel in signage.

3 months or 3 years?
Nothing has changed since 2009.
Where the customers should come from suddenly?
Telnames advertise only on a small radio station in Bristol (just started).
Don't expect more than 10 or 20 new registrations from it.