Is there still a market for domain name investment? Ma Huateng said so
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Tencent CEO Ma Huateng once said: We even think that in the future Internet world, domain names will no longer be needed. There is no need to register a website address. All you need is a number. All services can be provided by scanning a QR code.
Recently, the media reported that Tesla CEO Musk spent $11 million to buy the Tesla.com domain name, which made me feel sorry for Tesla investors for a whole day, because this money was definitely not paid by Musk himself. A debt-ridden company actually spent nearly 80 million yuan to buy a sentimental domain name. It is too indulgent for its CEO. No wonder Musk boasted: "I decided the chairman candidate, and she can't control me." Just two years ago, Musk spent $8 million to buy the X.COM domain name to jump to the hat sales page of The Boring Company under his name. In my opinion, it is more appropriate for the X.COM domain name to jump to the sales page of Xtep.
In the Internet age, domain names are indeed a company's gilded business card. There is a more profound story. The famous hotel booking website, Zhuna.com, obtained a large amount of free traffic in the PC era with its excellent search engine optimization capabilities. With a large flow of traffic, the reputation is naturally great, but the domain name of Zhuna.com is ZHUNA.CN. Many netizens with a little more experience will skip the step of searching in the search engine and directly type ZHUNA.COM in the browser address bar, which will obviously lead to other people's websites, and obviously reduce Zhuna.com's online image, and even suffer the pain of being a wedding dress for others.
Around 2010, the hottest concept in the Internet industry was undoubtedly group buying. Group buying was first created by GROUPON.COM in the United States. A Chinese Internet fanatic spent 3 million RMB to buy the GROUPON.CN domain name that 90% of Chinese people would not type directly. And this fanatic actually participated in "Win in China" in 2006, racking his brains to get a position in the show, with the ultimate goal of getting the favor of the limelight and obtaining 10 million RMB of venture capital. If I were Jack Ma, I would have eliminated him in the first round. Although the search engine clearly stated that it would not discriminate against domain names with any suffix, it also clearly stated that if the domain name is appropriate to the product or company name it sells, it will get a higher weight. But if you become famous, you will eventually suffer from the punishment of the Internet. Therefore, even in the PC Internet era, valuable domain names are limited to .COM domain names.
Tongcheng Elong (formerly known as Tongcheng), which was recently listed in Hong Kong, spent a lot of money to purchase the TONGCHENG.COM domain name around 2014, but Tongcheng changed its name to Tongcheng Elong in 2017, so this domain name is obviously not closely related to the current company name. Tongcheng also purchased the LY.COM domain name before the mobile Internet debuted. However, in the mobile Internet era, .COM domain names will no longer be valuable.
Tencent CEO Ma Huateng once said: We even think that the future Internet world may not need domain names, no need to register a website, just a number, scan with a QR code, and all services can be provided.
Perhaps Ma Huateng's words may not be scientific, but just to build momentum for WeChat mini-programs, but we do have dozens of APPs lying on our mobile phones. What is more certain is that the frequency of use of mobile Internet and PC Internet is 8:2. On the mobile side, domain names that replaced IP (here refers to typing in IP addresses) will eventually be replaced by mini-programs, QR codes, or other new things. On the PC side, domain names do still have a place, but this place is getting smaller and smaller, not to mention how many people type in domain names directly?
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