legitimacy of 'alternative' extensions

[Dustin07]

Webmasters shun domains ending with '.ws,' '.be,' etc. because of the issue of legitimacy. Also, the average web user does not type in "candy.ws" when looking for a candy 'dotcom'.

the average user doesn't know the difference of .net and .com then. So to assume that a .ws extension hurts a site's legitimacy in the eyes of the average visitor is some what illegitimate in itself.

You can very easily pick up a 'trustworthy' and 'professional' domain such as "drummersworld.com" and whip up a crappy site that immediately makes a visitors close the site and vomit. You can smother webmaster.com in cheap advertising and no real content, ruining the 'legitimacy' of the domain.

If we can so easily ruin .com's, why can't we create legimiate 'alternative' domain extensions?

The domain, blue.ws, may have no value as an empty domain, but I think a person could put their heart and soul into that domain and end up with the same end product as if they were working blue.com. When people land on blue.ws they're going to put it through the same subconscious ringer that they would blue.com. And when it's all said and done, they are going to chose to send the url to someone else (or book mark it) based upon the content, not the url.

while your ".ws" domain may not get the type in traffic of the '.com' version of the same domain, I doubt "google" expected a lot of 'type in" traffic when they first started branding their product.

thoughts?

[Aviva]

I agree. Whois.sc (although they have since renamed the site) is a good example of this. The owners branded this domain well.

I don't think I've ever seen another site with a Seychelles extension before and I'm only vaguely aware of where Seychelles is. But whenever I need to do a whois lookup, whois.sc is where I go.

[Dustin07]

Thanks

I own a .ws and I'll be honest. I purchased it to 'cheat'. I wanted the keywords I found nestled in the domain name, and I wanted to create revenue. However, I didn't want a cheezy second rate site. I wanted something that people would refer to others. From the beginning my plan was to build it and sell it. However the more I put into it, the more I like it. It finally occured to me there's no reason why I couldn't brand this .ws domain name as being a trustworthy, blogworthy, referrable site. I guess it goes back to the old 'content is king' saying.