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"They blew it…that’s the short of it. They failed to recognize the single biggest bonanza since the gold rush over 100 years ago. They failed to recognize it was time sensitive so they had no sense of urgency to act." - Rick Schwartz, the Domain King, on the .com Bonanza of the 1990’s (in a 2004 interview with DNJournal.com - http://www.dnjournal.com/columns/cover020204.htm)

This retrospective comment from Rick Schwartz, now so blatantly obvious to those in the domaining industry, not only perfectly sums up the missed opportunities of the 90s (the “They” he refers to are major corporations, content to spend fortunes on TV and Radio advertising while missing the Internet boat); it can also be applied to “IDNing” – speculation and registration of Internationalized Domain Names (IDNs).

If you still don’t know what an IDN is, here is a quick-and-dirty primer: IDNs are domains that can contain characters other than ASCII characters (such as Asian scripts, Cryllic letters, or accent marks on Latin-based languages for example).

If you are asking this question, it is time to key in on a fact that current IDNers seem to inherently understand, and the rest of the domaining world are either coming to realize or are stubbornly ignoring: A majority of the world’s population speaks a language other than English.

Since the inception of the Internet, however, people who have wanted to use the web for research, entertainment, and (perhaps more importantly) to advertise or sell goods and services, have had to do so with ASCII-based URLs.

Because this site is an English-based site, and the story you are currently reading is in English, you may not fully grasp the difficulty behind the use of ASCII domains for non-English speakers. Here is an example:

Suppose I told you that I needed you to visit my website for some important contact information that I needed you to have. Now suppose I told you this was my website: 联系方式.com. Do you think you would have a difficult time remembering the URL? Or have difficulty typing it in? This is akin to the difficulty that has faced non-English speaking and non-ASCII typing users for years (the domain above means "Contact Method" in Simplified Chinese, by the way).

In many ways, IDNs are a parallel to the ".com Bonanza" that happened just over a decade or so ago, yet now domainers have the luxury of hindsight and the ability to learn from the past. Many of the mistakes and pitfalls of the .com business boom and bust can be avoided, while investment in IDNs in various languages can pay off big, to domainers, small business owners and companies alike.

One of the most surprising aspects of the "IDN Bonanza" is that it is still currently ongoing. While it is true that almost all of the top premium generic terms in most of the major languages are already registered, the young aftermarket affords domainers real opportunity to grab some amazing domains at unbelievably low prices, in forums such as IDNF.com (IDNForums, the leading sales and discussion forum on Internationalized Domain Names), DNForum.com and Namepros.com.

Domainers and business owners are at a truly unique point in history. While the old adage that "history repeats itself" may hold true, it is rare to not only be a part of that repetition, but to recognize it and capitalize on it. A small number of IDN Pioneers have done just that, and have been kind enough to share their advice and expertise on the new gold rush. Don’t fail to recognize it this time.

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