Is pizza.nyc More Valuable than pizza.com?

By Mike Maddaloni on Tuesday, June 16, 2009 at 06:00 AM with 5 comments

There is momentum around New York City getting its own generic top-level domain (gTLD) - .nyc. The team organizing it, dotNYC LLC even has a ringing endorsement by former mayor Ed Koch. Where there has been a lot of controversy about the mass unveiling of gTLDs, this one has a lot of traction and makes a lot of sense to me, especially for a city of 8 million plus people.

So this got me thinking – which would be a more valuable domain name, pizza.com or pizza.nyc?

Last year pizza.com was sold in auction, and the price was reported to be around the US$2.6Million it sold for earlier. There is a Web site at pizza.com that has the tagline of “everything about pizza” but isn’t a compelling Web site, especially to someone like myself who 1) designs and develops Web site, 2) is 100% Italian American and 3) has eaten quite a bit of pizza in his time! I am not quite sure of the revenue model here; I can perform what is a Google search through the site for pizzerias, but you can’t order a pizza directly through the Web site.

When I think of pizza.nyc, all I think of is opportunity. The competition for this domain name will be significant, with parties from within New York City and beyond. The name recognition will almost be automatic in the City as there will be other .nyc domain names plastered throughout the city and people will start to naturally go to whatever dot nyc to get to a product or service. Then there is revenue. Pizza.com could be one pizza chain or a consortium of many. Whether it is direct or affiliate sales, there is definitely opportunity to make money from pizza in a city where people are passionate about their pizza.

This is not to say there is not opportunity for pizza.com. I do not have any insight or knowledge into its owners or their business model. What I am saying is based on what I see – both from what pizza.com is and what pizza.nyc can be.

What do you think? Are you in the pizza business? Are you a resident of New York City? Or do you just buy pizza? We’d like to know.


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Business • Domain Names • Technology • (5) Comments • Permalink

Comments

I’m with you, I think pizza.nyc has great potential..!  (just typing it i’m getting hungry….)  :-)

Picture of Amy Chasse Comment by Amy Chasse
on 06/16/09 at 09:23 AM
 

Thanks for the tech data that is very close to my heart, er, stomach!  NYC pizza blows the rest away.  I will never forget foolishly ordering 2 slices at my first NYC pizzeria after a Mets game.  I asked for 2 slices.  When they seemed to hand me half a pie, I almost swooned.

P

Picture of Peter Alan Smith Comment by Peter Alan Smith
on 06/16/09 at 01:11 PM
 

A .nyc gTLD will be great for dotNYC, LLC. It’ll be a long time before people understand that an address ending in .nyc is a valid hostname, or maybe I’m not giving New Yorkers enough credit. I still know plenty of people who don’t even know they’re supposed to enter the .com in the address bar. It’ll always be the most valuable since the major browsers will guess that the user intended to enter .com.

P.S. The registrant of pizza.com is totally squandering their domain based on the design of their site.

Picture of btn Comment by btn
on 06/16/09 at 02:56 PM
 

@Brian - You have a point, as people will put a .com when it is a .org and as the site owner you need both.

In my opinion you need to be able to buy pizza thru pizza.com!

mp/m

Picture of Mike Maddaloni Comment by Mike Maddaloni
on 06/16/09 at 03:04 PM
 

I love the .nyc concept.  There would be a lot more inexpensive domains that actually want to service the city of New York, which in turn would probably provide a better search experience for the user.

Picture of Josh Comment by Josh
on 07/13/09 at 04:14 PM
 


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