Jason Calacanis Moves Launch Festival Website to Launch.CO

Jason Calacanis, a well known Internet entrepreneur and venture capitalist, has changed the url for his Launch Festival from Launch.is to Launch.CO. The conference is currently taking place in San Francisco, and it ends tomorrow, March 8.

This may not seem like all that big of a deal to many, but it’s a pretty big deal for the growth of the .CO Registry and I will explain why I believe this.

Calacanis is a very influential person when it comes to venture capital and the startup community. Not only has he founded and exited successfully from several startups, he also serves as a formal advisor for some and and informal role model for countless others. When Calacanis does something, people observe and take note. By shifting to a .CO for this particular conference, he is almost endorsing the extension, and I think the growth rate for adoption of .CO will come from startups who use it.

The festival is somewhat of a “celebration” of startups. One of the main purposes is for startups to pitch themselves to venture capitalists (and judges), and there is a reported $1,000,000 in financial commitments for winning companies. It’s also clearly a great opportunity for entrepreneurs to meet other entrepreneurs and potentially get investors for their businesses.

Even if the change to .CO isn’t particularly interesting to you, anyone interested in Internet business development would likely find the conference itself interesting. You can actually watch it live on the Launch website.

I understand that Israeli President Shimon Peres was honored at the Festival today as part of a trip focused on innovation in the Silicon Valley and San Francisco.

Elliot Silver
Elliot Silver
About The Author: Elliot Silver is an Internet entrepreneur and publisher of DomainInvesting.com. Elliot is also the founder and President of Top Notch Domains, LLC, a company that has closed eight figures in deals. Please read the DomainInvesting.com Terms of Use page for additional information about the publisher, website comment policy, disclosures, and conflicts of interest. Reach out to Elliot: Twitter | Facebook | LinkedIn

38 COMMENTS

  1. It already ranks higher on google than the .is version for me, but not sure if the search + social is causing that.

  2. The startup world is comprised mostly of tech who can be shocking clueless on domains (until they start something up that catches and learn their lesson the hard way on why .net really, really sucks…)

    That, plus a lot of them have huge emotional incentive to ‘put faith’ in other extensions, since round 1 seed cap burns up awfully quick, buying that decent .com.

    Go ahead though, lads. Learn the O.co lesson all over again. In the meantime, I’m raising my prices for 2012.

  3. It would be interesting to see how he re-brands his Facebook fan page (Facebook.com/launch.is), knowing that you can’t rename your fan page. Only approach is to create a new one and lose all the existing likes. Likes are not easy to get.

  4. @ Abdu

    If anyone has connections at Facebook, it is he. I suppose he could advertise on the Launch.is page that everything is going to Launch.co and eventually those who are interested will follow.

  5. looks real nice.

    Launch.co

    I love it. Makes perfect sense.

    It is hip, it is modern. Upgrade to .Co

    All .com owners will be required to upgrade their sites to .Co

    do it now lest you lose your .Co domain.

    Everyday .Co is becoming more powerful, more users, more registration, more money, more marketing dollars, banners are already on virtually every site I have been visiting the past week, and will overtake .com is my prediction.

    Long live the new Internet King.

  6. Jason Calacanis is a known personality in the Internet industry. Nice move, considering the use of “CO” for company here makes perfect sense.

    @Bob Clown

    Please stop it!

  7. Hey Robert Cline, any big .co sales lately?

    I love hearing about your $Xxxx+ sales, even though I never see them reported anywhere.

  8. Elliot,

    Nice write up and I agree with what you are saying however what you do not say is what impact this will have for domain owners and more importantly .Co domain owners.

    I see .Co domains being used by startups who can get their exact match for $30. If they succeed they then buy a .Com matching domain for $xxx,xxx if available.

    What I dont see is startups buying .Co domains for big bucks so regardless of Robert Cline says the winner will be the .Com owners who strike it lucky by having a company making good on the exact match .Co.

    Even worse news for .Co domainers is the fact that we will soon have a multitude of choices for startups, so when all decent .Cos as taken they will then move onto the next .whatever, just like now they have .Co & .Me ect soon they will have 1000 choices.

    My ten cents.

    • @ Anthony

      I don’t disagree with what you’re saying. However, I think when companies use .CO domain names, it increases awareness of what .CO is, which can’t be a bad thing. I still haven’t made a significant investment in .CO domain names.

  9. “This may not seem like all that big of a deal to many, but it’s a pretty big deal for the growth of the .CO Registry and I will explain why I believe this.”

    Not really when you actually read the site, they have a doc with: “Launch 2012 Companies that have launched”

    and the ones they have listed, these are the extensions:

    .com – 25
    .me – 2
    .co – 1
    .net – 1
    .is – 1
    .io – 1

  10. You know that article that you linked to isn’t based on reality right? See my last post. Lazy blogger syndrome. You might actually have to put some effort in to see what extensions startups, new businesses online are using.

    The funny thing is, it’s obvious Robert sunk his savings into this extension and his postings are helping that out any. Not good when an extensions #1 fan is some crazy person on the internet.

    • @ Johnnie

      LOL… Did you read the full article, or did you just stop after the second paragraph? What article did I link to that isn’t based on reality? AllThingsD?

      The conference changed its url to .CO and that says something to others who follow the startup scene. This is something that just happened, so I wouldn’t expect it to have any type of instant impact. I didn’t report that startups have been changing their url as a result of Calacanis’ change. I said that it’s an endorsement of .CO in some ways, and I believe that to be the case. I also believe growth for the extension could come if popular startups are using .CO and people start looking to the right of the dot.

      You’d be on point if I said something like “lots of startups at the conference are using .CO” but I didn’t say that. I didn’t say anything about the startups at this show.

  11. “The conference changed its url to .CO and that says something to others who follow the startup scene.”

    Did it say anything when Jason went with .is first? Where were the domain blog posts when that first happened? I guess you didn’t see them because domain bloggers don’t invest in .is, like some do in .co.

    Again, in this case, launch.co makes more sense than .is, because it’s about launching companies. But, again, take time to actually go thru list of new companies, startups etc. There is no big shift to .co. It’s still 90% + .com and if they can’t get the keywords they want, they go for various other extensions.

    And the problem with .co, that it will never escape, is it’s the closest to .com, so it’s a bleeder extension. You saw that recently with news of a 61% bleed out rate with Overstock. Is it smart actually developing on a .co when you know you will lose traffic to the .com, more than any other extension out there? No, it’s kinda dumb.

  12. @ Johnnie

    Let me be crystal clear about this. I own fewer than 10 .CO domain names and maybe less than 5. My business is impacted immaterially by .CO happenings. I have never sold a .CO domain name.

    “Did it say anything when Jason went with .is first?”

    I can’t be everywhere at every time to see what extension every startup and influential person chooses. I happen to think it’s news when a company with an influential founder changes its url. Someone sent me this information and I posted an article about it. I know that a good portion of my readers follow .CO, so I post articles that I find interesting. I don’t think anything in my article is inaccurate, and I gave my opinion in addition to reporting what happened.

    “There is no big shift to .co. It’s still 90% + .com and if they can’t get the keywords they want, they go for various other extensions. ”

    I never said there was any shift whatsoever. I did say if startups use .CO domain names, it could lead to more awareness of .CO.

    I agree about the Overstock bleed, BUT there’s a big difference between Overstock and a startup using .CO. Overstock tried to shift their customer behavior. They built their brand over many years and I guess expected to shift behavior in a years time. This was aggressive. This is much different, though, than a company that starts with a .CO. Yes, I do think they may have issues and could need to buy the .com at a later date, but one would logically assume that they would be able to afford the .com if they were losing so much traffic.

    May I ask why you only seem to comment on my blog when it comes to .CO domain names? I appreciate the feedback but don’t understand why some people who visit often only comment on .CO news stories.

  13. “Let me be crystal clear about this. I own fewer than 10 .CO domain names and maybe less than 5. My business is impacted immaterially by .CO happenings. I have never sold a .CO domain name.”

    I know, you said you owned 6 before, including Bahamas. If you want to sell them in the future, positive news will be better than negative news obviously. Not saying that’s why you post about it, I understand people follow .co but it doesn’t hurt.

    “I agree about the Overstock bleed, BUT there’s a big difference between Overstock and a startup using .CO. Overstock tried to shift their customer behavior”

    They built their brand on Overstock, not the letter o. The news of the 61% bleed out rate was people trying to going to o.com (not overstock.com) after seeing o.co. So I imagine, even if you start on .co, out of habit, people are so used to typing the letter m after the c and o, it’s going to happen. So why would you start on an extension where that’s more likely to happen, when you can go for another extension, if you can’t get the .com you wanted?

    Can we agree that .co is the closest extension out there to .com? Again, if you can’t get the .com, you want to go with one the closest to .com, bleed out and one that will cause confusion? Even 1 customer going to the .com, trying to get to your .co site, is not a good thing. Bad user experience. When you’ll have less a chance of that, with another non .com extension.

  14. “May I ask why you only seem to comment on my blog when it comes to .CO domain names? ”

    I find the topic interesting.

    On a side note, unless the search function isn’t working properly, the last Overstock post you started was:

    Overstock Continues O.co Branding With Launch of Travel Brand
    January 4, 2012

    Leans more to neutral/positive.

    How come you didn’t write one on the 61% loss of traffic to the .com? Get into that topic. That was pretty big news on other blogs/forums.

  15. @ Johnnie

    Because Domain Incite wrote one and Rick Schwartz wrote one shortly thereafter. I no longer report Afternic/Sedo sales very often because Mike Berkens reports them almost instantly. I didn’t report an article about Protrada’s new development platform or Morgan Linton’s Appraiso website because others beat me and I couldn’t add to what they wrote.

    Unfortunately for me, Kevin from Domain Incite is in the UK and is 6 hours ahead of me. When news is reported elsewhere overnight, I don’t re-post something very similar, unless I didn’t see it first. I don’t like to see repetitive stories on Domaining.com as much as the next guy, so I don’t do it.

    The only times you see me report something the same as someone else is when the news breaks in the middle of the day and we post it around the same time or if I can add something to a story. With respect to that story, I don’t think there was much to add.

  16. @ Johnnie

    Why are you wasting all that time leaving a post after another if you just dislike the topic? One comment to express your (respected, as everyone else’s) opinion would be more than enough. They say overreacting is a sign of insecurity.

  17. Joe, funny your name links to a .co, talk about insecure. I know you’ve invested a lot in .co. It’s because I didn’t see Elliot’s last comment in his post, don’t know if it was added after I read the first part, so I responded.

  18. @ Johnnie

    Out of curiosity, do you own a lot of non .com domain names as investments? One thing I find interesting is that it seems people who invest in a lot of non .com names feel threatened by .CO and want to bash it. I think all the advertising .CO is doing brings awareness to the domain industry and is good for us all.

  19. @Johnnie

    My name links to a .CO but I own a total of 15-16 .COs. Judging by the heat you’re posting here, I’d say you own at least ten times that .coms

  20. Elliot, one thing I find interesting is you’ll post positive things about .co and not stuff like 61% bleed out rate. It’s the only non .com you have listed under Current Silver Internet Ventures, LLC Projects: and got the Bahamas.co thru the Founders Program.

    And then seeing the defensive posts after that, not really going into the points I bring up.

    “Out of curiosity, do you own a lot of non .com domain names as investments?”

    .com is my favorite. I also have .us, .me and other extensions. It’s obvious I don’t like .co for the reasons I posted about. A lot of what goes into the value of an extension is development. I’m not a big fan of extensions that will bleed to the .com.

  21. “My name links to a .CO but I own a total of 15-16 .COs. Judging by the heat you’re posting here, I’d say you own at least ten times that .coms”

    That’s interesting since you have 770 posts in the .co thread over at Namepros. I venture to guess you have a lot more than you’re letting on. And I’m not posting heat, my blood pressure is not going up 1 point talking about domains. It seems talking about .co and potential problems upsets some people, that’s more telling than anything.

  22. @ Johnnie

    As I said, Kevin and Rick wrote articles about it practically before I woke up, and there was no reason to re-write what they wrote.

    I just double checked and the only .CO names I own:

    Bahamas.CO
    Elliot.CO
    ElliotsBlog.CO

    That’s it. Just 3 that I could find. Yes, I did get Bahamas.CO as part of the founders program and developed it as per the requirement. I have been 100% clear about that.

  23. @Johnnie

    “That’s interesting since you have 770 posts in the .co thread over at Namepros. I venture to guess you have a lot more than you’re letting on.”

    As for the number of .CO names I own, they’re absolutely less than 20, but of course you’re free to believe what you wish. Believing in an extension’s potential doesn’t necessarily mean you have to buy hundreds of names. Funny that you even took the time to count all my posts, proof that some people waste too much time minding others’ business instead of theirs.

  24. Joe:

    “Funny that you even took the time to count all my posts, proof that some people waste too much time minding others’ business instead of theirs.”

    I didn’t, I clicked 1 link, took me a whopping second or two. Little forum trick, go to that thread, click on 7,956 replies, it’ll list:
    Who Posted?
    Total Posts: 7,957
    Sorted by name and post count. You have the second most replies in that thread.

    Elliot:
    “Bahamas.CO
    Elliot.CO
    ElliotsBlog.CO

    That’s it. Just 3 that I could find.”

    Ok, the 6 I mentioned was from another post of yours from last year about o.co and the brand being here to stay, looks like you sold/let expire a few of them.

  25. @ Johnnie

    Yes, I believe I let them drop. As I continue to mention, I am not an active .CO investor or buyer and have no stake. .CO has paid for the single rotating banner for the full year in advance, whether I write anything or not.

    Anyway, I do appreciate your coming here and commenting. It’s always good to hear a different opinion on things, and I am certainly not the be all end all when it comes to .CO.

  26. The .CO domain has become one of the most sucessful new domain extensions in the world since it was launched in the summer of 2010 – and the number of registrations keeps growing! It’s so close to the .COM and .CO.UK – but shorter and easier to remember.

    but shorter and easier to remember.

    but shorter and easier to remember.

    but shorter and easier to remember.

    this is the key !

  27. I’ve posted this before but I’ll post again here since it’s sort of on-topic.

    If you enter “Robert Cline” in an anagram generator you get…

    Terrible Con

    Happy Friday!!!

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