.BEST to reinforce partnership with Backend

The .Best Registry today announced that is reinforcing its strategic partnership with Backend Registry provider before launching THE.Best social commerce innovation.

"As we are now close to the Best social commerce app launch, we have decided to strengthen our backend operations to support our .Best domains distribution from the Best app” said Cyril FREMONT, Chief Executive Officer of the .Best Registry and THE.Best social commerce".

.Best Registry will be the first Top-Level Domain to distribute .Best domains from the Best app. 

THE.Best social commerce onboarding already started with social media early-adopters: Cyril.Best, Hotels.Best, Adrien.Best, Julian.Best, Alexandra.Best, Christophe.Best, Joao.Best, Pizzas.Best, Sonia.Best, Miami.Best, Foodlover.Best, Fashionista.Best, Jesuis.Best, Cars.Best, Foodvegas.Best, Chaussures.Best, Jean.Best, Fabrice.Best, Heloise.Best, Stephane.Best, Luxe.Best, Music.Best, Games.Best, Kevin.Best, Emilyinparis.Best, Hotels.Best, Watch.Best, Trailer.Best, Djs.Best, Luxury.Best, Foodparis.Best, Wines.Best, Show.Best, Book.Best, Laptops.Best, Spas.Best, Karim.Best, Maillotdefoot.Best, Parisien.Best, Foodnyc.Best, Steven.Best, Valerie.Best, Foodla.Best, Restaurants.Best, …

About .Best (Top-Level Domain): .Best (THE BEST SAS) is the Registry Operator for .Best domain names and already counts +100K .Best live domains registered in 180 countries.

.Best mission is to develop THE.Best social commerce as a new rewarded social media solution for 4B social media users and a new promotion and e-commerce opportunity for brand & business owners.

 .Best Websites:

• Register your .Best Domain Names : www.go.best
• Join THE.Best Social Commerce : www.the.best
• Protect your Best Trademarks : www.brands.best

The .BEST new gTLD and THE.BEST Social Network (update)

As you might probably know, THE.Best social media has now made an important shift to become an innovative social commerce app where social media users can not only review but also promote their best products and services.

Cyril Fremont, CEO of the .BEST new gTLD wrote a few lines to explain in details the new social commerce direction that he is now taking according to the .Best mission : "Turn every social media user into a .Best seller".

Why social commerce ?

Social commerce is one of the hottest trends in social media today, and it seems to have an even bigger impact in 2020.

30% of online shoppers say they would are likely to buy direct from a social media network like Facebook, Pinterest, Instagram, Twitter or Snapchat.

Instagram data tells us that 70% of shoppers look at Instagram for product discovery: https://www.facebook.com/business/instagram/shopping

Instagram is actually transforming its business model to enable social browsers to buy directly from instagrammers.

In China, Social Shopping via videos is currently performing extremely well. There are efforts from short video apps like Douyin (TikTok’s Chinese sister) that match merchants with content creators for promotion. During the coronavirus lockdown, millions of consumers relied on live videos to check out products and posed questions to merchants remotely, a practice that has won endorsement from local governments as a way to drum up domestic consumption. In just Q1 this year, more than 4 million live shopping sessions took place in China; but that's not only a natural evolution of social media, E-commerce platforms are also evolving to social commerce.

Chinese e-commerce giant and pioneer of shoppable videos Alibaba is looking to recruit over 100,000 international influencers this year – rising this number to 1 million influencers by 2023 – to help brands sell more across the globe through the group’s international retail platform, AliExpress, which claims to have 180 million annual active consumers: https://twitter.com/FremontCyril/status/1315938584525000705

To be 100% clear about THE.Best vision: https://twitter.com/FremontCyril/status/1315704910068023296

• WEB 1.0 from 2000 to 2010 was the rise of e-commerce platforms (amazon, alibaba, ...)
• WEB 2.0 from 2010 to 2020 was the rise of social media platforms (facebook, instagram, twitter, ...)
• WEB 3.0 starting 2020 will be the rise of social commerce.

What about social media user motivations in 2020 ?

There are actually almost 4B active social media users (+10% YoY): https://twitter.com/FremontCyril/status/1315594932875415552

Social media statistic uncovers that an average of 3 hours are spent per day per person on social networks and messaging.

But more importantly: 54% of social browsers use social media to research products (Source GlobalWebIndex). More and more buyers are joining social media networks and looking for reviews and product recommendations. Here is the summary of social media users motivations in 2020 :

• Social Media Browsers : Research products. (Ex : +350 MAU on Pinterest )
• Social Media Creators : Monetize their content (Ex : 39% active influencers on Instagram)
• Business Owners : Promote their products. (Ex : 80M Facebook Business pages)
• Brand Owners : Protect their trademarks. (Ex : 7M Registered Trademarks)

What about THE.Best social commerce value for social media users?

• Social Media Browsers : THE.Best provides an open social commerce app that let social media browsers discover (feed), research, find and review the best products/services in any category (hotels, high-tech, beauty, fashion, ...)
• Social Media Creators : THE.Best provides a unique curating solution that help content creators monetize their audience promoting the best products.
• Business Owners : THE.Best provides an innovative digital solution that help business owners promote their Best products through influencers.
• Brand Owners : THE.Best provides a dual digital protection for official trademark owners : https://www.brands.best.

What is THE.Best secret sauce and unique curating innovation for social media creators ?

Curating content is adding your voice (and value) to an existing handpicked collection of content. Gathered from a variety of sources, around a specific topic, that you publish and share with your social community. Many brands already use content curation on their owned and operated websites and blogs to promote industry news stories, but social media is the marketing platform where curation happens most. Social media content curation takes place when a marketer filters through all of the interesting content online and shares the best news, video, images, etc. he/she finds online on a company’s social networks.

In THE.Best social commerce app, each post is a commodity, so that curating content means promoting other products. So that, THE.Best social commerce app enables content creators monetize their social media audience by curating best products on a dedicated .Best social commerce website. Every social media user can build its own .Best social commerce website just by curating other best products and services. By promoting others products, social media users win rewards for each click coming from their .Best social commerce website.

What about Brand & Business owners ?

As a Brand and Business owners, THE.Best content curation helps you promote your best products from thousands of social commerce websites. Brand and Business owners can achieve data-driven marketing at a scale with minimum effort.

How content curation is important for social networks ?

Internal content curation is the growth key of most social media platforms :

• Twitter has its Tweet/Retweet content curation,
• Pinterest has its Pin/Board content curation,
• THE.best has its Best(product)/.Best(websites) content curation.

What's THE.Best plan ?

THE.Best Social Network new social commerce features (promoting your best products) will be available by next week for influencers, vip, business and brand owners through a new apple store (testflight) and google play app version.

THE.Best unique product curation features will be available by end of 2020 with the new social commerce website template.

Number one French Registry just changed

I just published (with a slight delay) the November 2019 new gTLD reports for all 20 categories and noticed a few changes:

1. All (or almost all) registries belonging to Backend Registry Verisign had an increase of domain name registrations: this is rather strange ad I had noticed this already last year.
2. OVH, wich ".ovh" domain names are open to all for registration saw a decline in registrations in November from 63,000 down to 62,000 and let the .BEST registry become number one in registrations from 51,000 to 69,400 domain names.

That Corporate Registrar Sucks

Note for my December new gTLD report: I also noticed that my reports are used by - at least - one American Corporate Registrar for his clients. For this reason, I might delay the publication of coming reports. This is not the first time that it happens unfortunately so expect my contents...not to be free to read anymore, unless you want to sponsor them ;-)

2 new gTLD Reports in 2020

I am considering 2 new reports in 2020:

1. The .BRAND new gTLD report (note that this one will note be published publicly;
2. The TOP 10 new gTLD report.

If you have ideas of a new report, I am happy to consider.

THE.BEST Social Network: NamesCon keynote 2

NamesCon 2019: CEO Cyril Fremont, .Best Keynote, Presenting THE.BEST Social Network:

• Rewarded;
• Decengtralized;
• Responsible;
• And Global.

THE.BEST Social Network: NamesCon keynote 1

This is the first part of a live introduction to the The.BEST Social Network, by Cyril Fremont. This intro was done during the last NamesCon in Las Vegas.

Reminder: THE.BEST social network is an innovative social network to launch in 2019. It is based on the use of ".best" domain names and will come with plenty more surprises ;-)

The .BEST new gTLD Execution Plan

This is the latest .BEST execution plan published by the Registry.

Timeline

• July 2018: .BEST registry acquisition by Cyril Fremont and team of investors;
• August 2018: transition to backend registry solution provider;
• September 2018: strategy for quarter four;
• October 2018: on-boarding of new ".best" accredited registrars;
• November 2018: .BEST promotion;
• December 2018: social media marketing;
• January 2019: strategy FY2018.

Check the official stats on the new gTLD report dedicated to which domain name extensions companies should keep their eyes on. The ".best" domain name registration figures already speak by themselves. 

Reminder
Price of ".best" domain names is below $10 per year at certain registrars. Ensure you register your domain names before the promotion ends on January the 31st, 2019. Check the full list of registrars here.

In English shall we?

This is a complete interview from Andrew Allemann (from Domain Name Wire) giving full details on the .BEST new gTLD project.

Innovation
Again, and for the first time in the history of domain names, an innovation is brought here since we're not talking about domains only: the acquisition of the .BEST registry adds cryptocurrency and the development of a new kind of social network to this acquisition.

Questions answered
Andrew Allemann comes with targeted questions and gets answers on how the project is funded and by who, why it is so important to have a "decentralized" social network, what the reviews are going to be and how they will be rewarded, Cyril Fremont also gives market figures and explains why this new business model makes sense today.

An example, based on figures,  comparing Facebook to this new social network is also given in this interview.

In English this time: listen to the podcast.

The .BEST new gTLD and SEO Whitepaper

This is a whitepaper published by the .BEST new gTLD registry. I particularly like the title used in the presentation: "The untold truth". This is an extract of the content that you will find in this document:

1. Why choose a .BEST domain name;
2. What is the .BESt new gTLD;
3. Examples of possible domains names on .EST;
4. Why ".BEST"?
5. Best and Food;
6. Best and Products;
7. Best and Entertainments,
8. Best and Services;
9. Best and Co;
10. Google Trends score:
1. Score: 97/100;
2. Best vs Price.
11. HOT: dotBEST and SEO:
1. .BEST and Google;
2. .BEST and CTR (Click Through Rate);
3. .BEST and Bounce rate;
4. .BEST and Dwell Time (time on site);
5. .BEST and Pages Per Visit;
6. .BEST and Conversion rate;
7. Conclusion.
12. Examples of ".best" domains indexed in google.

Download the White Paper here.

The .BEST Crypto-Currency

The BestCoin token is the upcoming crypto-currency being developed by the recently acquired .BEST registry.

One could think about "just another crypto-currency" being dropped to consumers on the Internet but the concept here is quite innovative from what we've seen before. The BestCoin crypto currency makes sense because of the "territory" it becomes a part of:

1. a Digital Territory (".best" domain names);
2. a Crypto-Currency (the BestCoin token) and;
3. a Community (a new social network technology).

This combination will allow some owners of a ".best" domain name to generate an income from their reviews and traditional Registrants will also be able to choose to use their domain name in a traditional way for their website.

A detailed article was recently published about the .BEST crypto-currency: "A Mobile Payments Social Network? The Best SAS May Be Working On It".

The Best SAS acquires .Best TLD in Strategic Deal

PeopleBrowsr, a San Francisco based technology company, announced today the sale of its BestTLD Pty Ltd subsidiary to The Best SAS, a Paris based company led by President, Cyril Fremont.

BestTLD Pty Ltd owns the .Best top level domain. It has distribution agreements with GoDaddy and over 50 other Domain Registrars.

The sale has been approved by ICANN (Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers).

The .Best TLD has been acquired as a core component of a decentralized search optimized social network, where participants will be rewarded with .Best cryptocurrency for reviewing best in class products and services.

Jodee Rich PeopleBrowsr’s CEO said “This is a strategic deal for PeopleBrowsr. It provides us with a good return on our 2014 Best TLD investment and a partner who’s roadmap is aligned with our own. We believe in Cyril and his team. They are using three new technologies - Top Level Domains, Social Networks and Blockchain to create an economy between Buyers and Sellers “

Cyril Fremont said “We are giving the consumer their own domain name, an integrated website where they own the data, and rewards for their contribution to the community. Platforms like ours continue to move negotiating power between reviewers and sellers”

“French culture is synonymous with best in class consumer products, so, .Best was the obvious choice for the project.”

The Best SAS received financial support for the purchase from investors, the French government’s BPIFrance, and Spring Legal Lawyers: Frédéric Boucly said “This venture is a global technology play. Mr Fremont has a proven track record”.

PeopleBrowsr Background
PeopleBrowsr is a San Francisco based technology company founded in 2008. It has earned over $20M in revenue.

Its core technology, SocialOS is a Blockchain integrated platform for the rapid development of social applications.

Institutional clients include the US Department of Defense, a major bank and government entities.

PeopleBrowsr acquired 3 gTLDs in ICANN’s first round, .CEO, .Best and .Kred, and has progressively implemented SocialOS technology across each namespace.

CEO Jodee Rich, is a thought leader in the technology industry. He has spoken at many conferences and believes that the integration of blockchain and social networks will give more power to individuals and small business.

The Best SAS Background
The Best SAS is the first and only French company to own a new Generic Top Level Domain. It was founded by major shareholder PREMLEAD.

PREMLEAD is an online marketing company that fuel online sellers with premium leads using a network of+50.000 websites worldwide and a unique web content technology.

CEO Cyril Fremont, is working as an Internet Entrepreneur since 1996. After starting his career in the Silicon Valley, he co-founded or participate to 3 major successful IPOs : INTERSHOP, ARIBA, SIDETRADE.

It took Five years to Cyril Fremont to complete the .Best acquisition.

The Best will be the first Registry to own its own TLD, CRYPTO and SOCIAL NETWORK.

Download the full Press Release