How WebRTC Impacts Domain Names

Posted by bruce in Domain Development, Domains, Featured, Tech, WebRTC | 2 comments

As I have shown lately I am a big proponent of WebRTC, WebRTC allows real time communications between web browsers without a download, i.e. no plugin or Java download. This will enable all sorts of new voice, video, chat, and data applications.

As you can imagine this is the type of trend it is good to get ahead of if you invest in domain names. You can already see sites like Twelephone.com coming up with unique brandable names for the new social communication services they are offering. This is just the beginning as more and more companies are beginning to use the technology as it becomes more widespread in browsers (currently it is available in Google Chrome and nightly releases of Firefox).

On Linkedin recently I had someone contact me giving me a thanks for talking about the new technology as they were able to pick up some related domain names and then on Twitter this week the team over at Media Options asked my thoughts on how I thought WebRTC would impact domain names.

As I have been wanting to do some domain blogging lately I thought it a good topic to hit on. I have not posted about domain names as much lately as I honestly feel the market is pretty saturated with blogs and I do not feel like rehashing the same things people Like Morgan Linton and Mike Berkens are already talking about, they do a great job and no reason for me to just wrap new words around it. BTW, just listed a couple of my favorites, there are plenty more.

So all that said, when talking about how WebRTC impacts domaining I see a couple things:

• It proves the domain name is not dead
• Real time domains are key

I am the first one to tell people that mobile usage is driven from the app, we have become an app centric world due to the continued penetration of the smartphone and tablet devices such as the iPad (I officially only use my iPad Mini as my deskphone as of just this past month).

But, even though there are iOS SDKs being built for WebRTC enablement, one of the main drivers of WebRTC is browser to browser communication without a plugin, you can imagine that brandable domain names become very important especially if they can include some relevance to real time communications, and to be clear do not look at communications just as voice. Video, Chat, and Application and Data Sharing will become easier and more pervasive. Look at companies like BlueJeans.com to understand how video conferencing is driving harder than ever and becoming a usable service for businesses.

That means the domain is not dead, although people do find much of what they are looking for through search the browser is not dead and this will keep driving people to the browser and not always to an app.

On the generic side, alot of the key WebRTC domains are already taken, I found one last good product related one today but as this is new trend there will be categories that pop up around it that you will want to be on the watch for. But more importantly I think picking up domain names related to real time and cloud based communications services are key. I have been on the look out and deciding where the most value is here but without a doubt if I had to choose based on the trend its real time, cloud based, communications and more importantly SDKs and APIs. One word: Twilio

So, there you have it, future trend domain investment has paid off for people many times. This is no different, pay attention to the trends and profit.