Neustar wrote a piece for Circle ID that was all about why a brand should want to go with a .Brand over a .Com. They gave four reasons as to why this is the desired route.
4. Stand out in a world of dot com’s
No matter how catchy your domain name is, anything ending with dot com is just that — “another dot com.” With a branded TLD, e.g. www.offers.yourbrand, every listing of your web address becomes a brighter billboard, helping you compete more effectively in the marketplace. The fact that we instinctively think of .com shows how hard it is to stand out when you use it.
The problem with that logic is .COM is the gold standard when it comes to business and brands around the world. It is the extension that is at the end of most advertising campaigns. The biggest sites in the world YouTube,Google,Yahoo,Facebook, Twitter are all on .com.
It is an also an awkward place for Neustar, you just bought .CO and you run .US, so taking a position to focus on the new kids on the block I understand getting caught up in the hype, but what about other extensions in your corporate portfolio ?
The registrants in .CO and .US do not want to see you show a bias, and if they buy into what you are saying they might as well not renew their .CO and .US domains. If you don’t want to be just “another dot com” you sure and heck don’t want to be “another dot co or dot us”.
Read the full article here to read the other 3 points.
I’ve changed my opinion. I now see .brand not able to replace .com because (1) customers of major corporations in the world already know their .com, so why spend huge amount of money to re-educate their customers when .com is still working very well? (2) the biggest disadvantage of .brand is semantics. It’s just natural and easier for consumers to remember nike.com, nike.news, nike.club etc. than news.nike, club.nike. My 2c.