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Week of October 9, 2000 Editor's Choice Web Pick |
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The Lowdown on the New Economy:
By JACK LYNE • Site Selection Executive Editor of Interactive Publishing
It's a Web address we expected to materialize, and it has: www.dotcom.com.
No, we're not making that up. It's the actual address of this week's Web pick. And dotcom.com is a solid site, at least if you're interested in figuring out how, and where, the New Economy is evolving -- now only now, but in the future as well. (And despite the bevy of dot.bombs from today's Darwinian shakeout, the Internet revolution is just getting warmed up.)
Billing itself as "The Knowledge Center for the New Economy," the site claims to be the first "predictive source exclusively dedicated to dot.com businesses."
Dotcom.com is well positioned for that task. It's an arm of Network Solutions (www.networksolutions.com), one of the world's leading registrars of Web addresses, with over 10 million net registrations to date.
Accordingly, this site is a rich source for those interested in knowing where dot.coms are being -- and will be -- born. For example, a click on "U.S. Markets" produces a listing of the top states and top metros for dot.com registrations.
That section's "U.S. Map" click-off (located at the bottom of the page) offers an overall visual of how many dot.coms are located in each of the 50 states. Moving the cursor to an individual state produces data on its dot.com registration rank, as well as its top metros. (Houston, for example, is No. 1 in dot.com registrations in Texas, with some 94,000, 18,000 ahead of No. 2 Dallas.)
The site's "International Market" section provides information on top (non-U.S.) nations for dot.com registrations (the respective top 3 are the UK, Canada and Korea), as well as top cities (the respective top 3 are Seoul, London and Istanbul).
Those sections also contain predictive data. For example, the site reports, "International countries have registered 31 percent of all Web addresses through Q2 2000. Dotcom.com estimates that more Web addresses will be registered through international countries than the United States beginning in Q1 2002."
The site also analyzes dot.com data by industry.
Real estate, as many readers would anticipate, scores high. The industry ranks as the No. 4 business type in the number of registered Web addresses over the past three years (trailing only Internet service at No. 1, attorneys at No. 2, and computer software at No. 3).
The site's "Click, Brick & Mortar" section also has some interesting data on how the interaction of cyberspace and physical place is shaking out.
For example, according to the site, "Only a small percentage of brick-and-mortar businesses have registered and established an online identity." Eighty percent of Web sites are still "pure Internet players," not clicks-and-mortar converts, says dotcom.com. The top three bricks-and-mortar industries in domain name registration are No. 1 manufacturing, with 28 percent, No. 2 wholesale trade, with 17 percent, and No. 3 finance, insurance and real estate, with 14 percent, the site reports. The construction industry, with only 7 percent, ranks No. 8 among bricks-and-mortar sectors with registered domain names.
Dotcom.com also has original articles that touch on how real estate fits into e-business strategy. For example, we found "Dell.com: Reinventing the Supply Chain" in the "Article Library." And "This Month's Feature" offered an analysis of "The Dot.com Lifecycle."
Since the site has no search feature, though, there's no easy way to find such real estate-related articles. For now at least, it's a hunt-and-peck process.
Finally, the site gets some props from this corner for injecting a bit of refreshing wit.
The "dot.com humor" section, for example, contains "5th Wave" cartoons that skew toward "The Far Side." (Examples: A suave character intones, "The name is Bond.com. JamesBond.com"; then there's the Web site designer's office that's so elaborately tricked-up that no one can find the entrance.)
Dotcom.com also has a "Fun Facts" section. While there's nothing essential there, there are some interesting tidbits. For example: "If you lined up every Web address in existence end-to-end, and used the same lettering [size as] on a standard U.S. Stop sign, that Web address would be 27,000 miles (43,500 km.) long."
That's roughly 3,000 miles (4,830 km.) greater than Earth's circumference. Which reflects the raison d'être for dotcom.com - and why real estate is an increasingly significant part of its universe.
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©2000 Conway Data, Inc. All rights reserved. Data is from many sources and is not warranted to be accurate or current.
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