Japanese... .jp or .com...

[Proph]

Mmm... this is the question... what do you prefer? Japanese has been connected to internet for many years and they are used to see their .jp extension. How they see the dot com? They would see a dot com written in japanese with good eyes? Or they prefer .jp?

What do you think?

And thanks again for your patience.

Ivan

[Proph]

Any insight? I was about to register a couple of .jp domains but since they are expensive (more expensive than .com and .net) and you can't drop them later, I would like to know if .JP extension is ok. What do you think?

Best,

Ivan

[rhys]

We've had long long battles over this point back at IDNF. While it is impossible to say, there is no question that both .JP and .COM have value and .NET as well (though less than either .JP or .COM). Many of us believe that .JP is far superior, others believe that .COM is superior. Though I believe more in .JP myself, I continue to maintain large portfolios in both.

[clipper]

Someone along the way made an interesting observation that larger international companies may prefer the CCTLD, .jp, to make them seem more local, while local companies will go for the GTLD, .com, which makes them look global/bigger.

It's an interesting point, but, as an investor, I feel it's best to diversify.

[mj]

Japanese domains have been wiped clean in com, net, jp, and biz.

Good luck finding anything worthwhile to reg! And most people aren't selling...

Chinese has also been wiped clean, but many people are selling. Most of the sales and auctions on the forums now are Chinese domains.

.

[James]

Originally Posted by mj

Japanese domains have been wiped clean in com, net, jp, and biz.

Good luck finding anything worthwhile to reg! And most people aren't selling...

Chinese has also been wiped clean, but many people are selling. Most of the sales and auctions on the forums now are Chinese domains.

.

If you look at the drop list, the number of Chinese IDNs is a lot of more than those of other languages like Japanese, Korean, and Arabic. It seems Chinese IDN domainers not only wiped all the good names out, they went a little too far and registered many low quality names.

[James]

Originally Posted by rhys

We've had long long battles over this point back at IDNF. While it is impossible to say, there is no question that both .JP and .COM have value and .NET as well (though less than either .JP or .COM). Many of us believe that .JP is far superior, others believe that .COM is superior. Though I believe more in .JP myself, I continue to maintain large portfolios in both.

I also believe that both .com and ccTLD will be valuable for IDN, but in the long run, ccTLD may perform better.
Those people who believe strongly in .com are mainly looking at the ascii world. However, the games are different in non-English speaking countries. In ascii domain name space, there is no competitor to .com. But in other countries ccTLD is a solid alternative.
Both the governments and registries of the corresponding ccTLDs will try their best to promote their ccTLD since the governments want to have better control of their own internet, and the registries want to make money from it. Verisign will not spend a lot of money in each of those countries to promote their IDN.com.
As time goes, ccTLDs will gain ground and pass over .com.
Just my opinion.

[bwhhisc]

Originally Posted by Proph

Mmm... this is the question... what do you prefer? Japanese has been connected to internet for many years and they are used to see their .jp extension. How they see the dot com? They would see a dot com written in japanese with good eyes? Or they prefer .jp?
What do you think?
And thanks again for your patience.
Ivan

There are signs that idn.jp is cueing up to (eventually) alias to idn.idn (jp) which could make for some nice buzz and headlines in Japan when it happens. I don't think you can ever go wrong with a good keyword generic or geo .com

[rhys]

One of the chief arguments in my mind for why .JP will prove more valuable is that .JP is generally going to host pages in Japanese. Whereas a .COM could easily lead you to a Chinese website (since many Japanese and Chinese words overlap using same kanji). One thing that Japanese people dislike is thinking they are going to a Japanese page and finding nothing but Chinese. It's like French people accidentally getting themselves sent to Polish websites again and again.

.JP will over the long term will become synonymous with "Japanese" and .COM will become a hit or miss experience. This will be reflected in type-in behavior over these extensions.

However, .COM has a kind of global internet prestige and recognition in Japan so I don't think that its value will be ever be far behind .JP.

Also I think Japanese are very open to .NET domains.

[rhys]

The one thing I disagree with is that small Japanese companies will go and get a .com to make themselves seem more "global". In general, I think it is presuming too much to think that a small Japanese company ever thinks about customers who aren't in Japan. Who cares about them, foreigners complain in languages that aren't in Japanese and non yen currencies freak them out. Non-Japanese are too high maintenance when you are a small company, especially when you have the second largest economy in the world to sell to in your own language who cares about anything else?

To such a mindset, correct or not, .JP means Japan.