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What's Coming in e-Commerce in 2010?
(Editor's Note: You follow Stanley Jaskiewicz through the year. For our year-end edition, Mr. Jaskiewicz offers his predictions ' and he stresses that they are that, by definition, but “only” his very well-educated guesses ' for what Big Issues 2010 will hold for e-commerce. Happ' e-New Year!)
Making predictions for the New Year is a standard December column topic. Not that I consider either myself or this publication simply “standard,” mind you, but the year-end and look-ahead article is a standard, but time-honored and valuable feature in any publication.
And so, here we are.
For this year-end edition, because I believe that much of e-commerce law and strategy is no different from what is done in offline business (but people must be shown that it often is the same), I will follow suit and offer my own thoughts on the major trends that will affect online business in the next year.
Of course, I do this at the risk of being embarrassed when the predictions inevitably prove wrong, whether in a year ' or five, or 10. In a field marked by the iconic statement, “This changes everything,” there is no reason to expect that such always-expected change will occur in predictable ways. While some developments now seem inevitable in 20-20 hindsight ' the explosion of the multi-functional portable device and the success of the iPhone, for example ' others did not, at the time, beginning with the growth of e-commerce itself. Perhaps prognostication about what online commerce could do was as much an aspiration of its early supporters as it was a true prediction.
Nonetheless, in the spirit of “often wrong, always certain,” let's consider what will be the top 10 hot topics for e-commerce in 2010 ' or at least what I think they should be.
1. Non-Latin domain names. When I posed this question to my colleague and e-commerce veteran Tim Szuhaj, he instantly cited one issue as the greatest concern for his clients in the coming years: the creation of domain names and extensions (.com or .net) in non-Latin characters, such as Arabic or Chinese. Late this year, the Internet domain name manager ICANN (the International Corporation for the Assignment of Names and Numbers) quietly approved that proposal, which could spark yet another Internet land grab (see, http://news.cnet.com/8301-1023_3-10387139-93.html; http://www.cnn.com/2009/TECH/10/29/internet.domains.languages/index.html). Technically named “internationalized domain names” (see, www.icann.org/en/announcements/announcement-30oct09-en.htm and www.icann.org/en/topics/idn), the proposal contemplated allowing nations to apply to use non-ASCII script to provide local-language characters for domain names, tentatively scheduled to begin in the middle of last month. According to ICANN Chairman Peter Dengate Thrush: “The coming introduction of non-Latin characters represents the biggest technical change to the Internet since it was created four decades ago” (see, www.icann.org/en/announcements/announcement-30oct09-en.htm).
Of course, change can be expensive. With “100,000 characters of the languages of the world” available, in ICANN's estimation, brand owners who have worried about spending to protect their name in multiple domains, whether for different countries or in specialty domains such as .biz, must now contemplate the same questions for different typefaces and countries around the world. Perhaps this is no different than the question of whether the additional protection of registering trademarks internationally justifies the potentially substantial expense, but the risk of being foreclosed out of significant markets makes the choice an important one. In addition, brand managers must soon weigh the potential costs of dealing with cybersquatters, but in new domains where procedures have not yet been established to protect the rights of trademark owners in a cost-efficient manner, as has already occurred in existing domains. Also, the infrastructure to support such language characters must exist, such as hardware, keyboards and other peripherals that will use the new typefaces (although presumably it already exists wherever such languages are used). (See, www.inc.com/news/articles/2009/11/icann.html.)
Yet haven't we seen this problem before? Most recently, in June, many marketers worked through the night to reserve Facebook.com's “user names” when it allowed companies to acquire them individually earlier in 2009. Similarly (but with less apparent attention), ICANN had a year earlier announced a program to permit customized domain name extensions (see, www.icann.org/en/topics/new-gtld-program.htm).
However, these new marketing venues should be quite different, once the initial organizational work has been completed. For one, the customized domain-name process involves far more work than simply registering a name, as ICANN describes: “The application for a new gTLD is a much more complex process. An applicant for a new gTLD is, in fact, applying to create and operate a registry business and sign a contract with ICANN” (see, www.icann.org/en/topics/new-gtlds/strategy-faq.htm). In addition, in a world that has grown accustomed to using .com and other existing domains, one can naturally be skeptical about the justification for spending limited funds (especially in these difficult economic times) on the assumption that online shoppers will make the switch to become comfortable using alternative domains.
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