BUSINESSWEEK ONLINE : MARCH 13, 2000 ISSUE
INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY New Players in the Name Game Last August, Belgian entrepreneur Lieven Van Neste started a business speculating on promising e-commerce Web addresses. He first snapped up 1,600 names, most fashioned around the phrase ''24 hours,'' such as 24hourAcupuncture.com and 24hourEverything.com, paying Network Solutions Inc. $70 per name for two-year registrations. But when he heard that Baltimore-based Bulkregister.com would do the same thing for a $10 annual fee, he jumped ship, registering his next 16,000-plus names with the cut-rate competitor. ''A client with 10,000 names is nothing to Network Solutions,'' he says. ''But to Bulkregister, it means a lot.'' Since competition officially started in the .com, .net, and .org registration business last November, new competitors have seized about 15% of new registrations from onetime monopolist Network Solutions. Many have promising business models--everything from deep-volume discounts to free domain names. ''They're finding places we didn't know existed,'' concedes Robert J. Korzeniewski, chief financial officer of Network Solutions. Some are meeting Network Solutions head on. The biggest newcomer--New York-based Register.com, with 467,000 registrations in just eight months--is targeting the same small-business customers that the incumbent is pursuing. In addition to domain names, Register.com offers services such as e-mail and Web site design--and it is off to a good start, says Prudential Securities analyst Paul Merenbloom. The challenge, he says, is for the company to ''ramp up its brand.'' Others are pursuing quirkier business models. NameSecure.Com, based in Moraga, Calif., is focusing on individuals--registering names such as joesmith.com--on the assumption that consumers will want to have their own piece of the Web. Soon people on the go will want their own Web pages, says Chairman Jeff Field, to access their home computers and appliances linked to the Net. FREE, WITH ADS. Namezero.com in Los Gatos, Calif., is taking that one step further, betting on consumers' insatiable appetite for free Internet services. It plans to give away Web-address registrations to individuals who set up personal portals. Armed with demographic information about its customers, Namezero then will sell ads and e-commerce opportunities to companies that want to target individual sites. Some 100,000 customers have preregistered for the service, which is still in trials and will launch officially in April. The company expects 4 million customers by 2002. Analysts, though, aren't convinced. ''I question whether advertisers will come in long enough for this to work,'' says analyst Ulric Weil of Friedman, Billings, Ramsey & Co. Regardless, the race to win customers is clearly spurring rapid innovation in the arcane business of domain names. ''There is a vast space yet to be pioneered,'' says Network Solutions General Manager Douglas L. Wolford. ''You skate where the puck is going.'' But the former monopolist is learning that when it's no longer the only player on the ice, it's sure to find others chasing the puck as well. By Catherine Yang in Washington _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ BACK TO TOP					RELATED ITEMS Network Solutions: Still the Master of Its Domain TABLE: No Longer a Monopoly New Players in the Name Game INTERACT E-Mail to Business Week Online

Copyright 2000-2009, by The McGraw-Hill Companies Inc. All rights reserved. Terms of Use   Privacy Notice