What Cyber-Price for a National Identity?

This is a case of 'let the seller beware' ...

The tiny Polynesian island nation of Niue is beginning to think it's been had.

Frankly, it's clear they didn't do their homework before they did their deal.

Ironically, it seems the buyer hadn't really done his, either.

Anyone who has been inundated by advertisements for 'global domains' can easily understand that it's a burgeoning business. The specter of purchasing a domain at a much better price than the more common 'dot com' or 'dot net' or 'dot org' is most attractive to most aspiring entrepeneurs on limited budgets. This niche's market leader is most likely Global Domains International (GDI), which has no doubt put Western Samoa on the mental map of many a cybernaut. The key element in that deal is that the Western Samoan government granted the rights to GDI in return for a royalty for every domain sold.

Niue's name is derived from the local language's phrase for, "Look, a coconut!" It seems they should have used theirs more thoroughly before signing a domain deal with Bill Semich in 1998.

An American businessman whose former station was editor for a computer magazine, Semich recognized the potential value in the marketability of unique domains. Apparently finding the 'nu' extension an attractive letter combination, he signed a contract with the Niue government that gave him the exclusive rights to it.

It wasn't a one-way deal. Semich guaranteed free wireless access for all 2000 of Niue's citizens and he delivered, completing the installation of an island-wide network of translator towers in 2003. The country's leaders surely felt they had provided their citizenry with a service for the new century which would favorably ensconce their place in island history.

Semich, meanwhile, intended to hawk his bargain domains to Americans. He had no idea that his ideal customers were in Sweden, where 'nu' is the local word for 'now.'

Obviously,'now' is a hot marketing action term in any language, so Semich was pleasantly surprised to find the Swedes flocking to his cyber-property. As a translated example of why this works for them, 'drive.now' (which would be 'köra.nu') is a very compelling sales slogan which becomes an ideal URL for a Swedish driving school. To date, Semich has had 110,000 sales of 'dot nu' domains at $30 a year, which has considerably swollen the coffers of his '.NU Domain Ltd' to the extent that its website's home page default language is now -- or nu --- in Swedish.

In fact, Semich has cleverly taken advantage of this windfall to become the first domain provider to incorporate a complete Unicode character set into its scripts, allowing users whose alphabets have unique characters --- in Swedish, that would be the letters 'å,' 'ä' and 'ö' --- to remain true to their language instead of settling for Anglicized versions, which often destroy their original meaning. His company has already announced the rollout of this service in Sweden. Given that Unicode enables linguistic propriety to Japanese, Cyrillic, Spanish, French, German, Arabic and any other script with unique characters, Semich has truly become a pioneer in his craft.

All this commercial success has wrought concerns in Niue. Not only is the disparity in financial benefit an issue, but the island's strongly Christian residents are upset that 'dot nu' has become a popular extension for pornographic sites. Semich disavows any responsibility for this segment of his clientele, but the fact remains that they are there.

The issue became such a political hot potato that 'neo-colonialism' was a trendy charge in Niue's recent elections. Semich seems shrewd enough to realize that he's got the high ground in any bargaining that must be done to assuage his Pacific partners, so a reasonable solution will surely be attained.

This scenario underscores the all-encompassing scope of cyberspatial commerce and the depth of considerations that both buyer and seller must assess before entering into far-reaching agreements. Not even the world's tiniest nation --- and that's remote little blip-in-the-Pacific Niue --- is immune from the effects.

The moral of the story, then, is to count your cyber-coconuts before they're cracked open. They may be worth more than you think.

Listed below are more articles related to the above article from the "Ecommerce" article category.

People interested in the above article "What Cyber-Price for a National Identity?" are also interested in the related articles listed below:

Oscommerce Software for Spectacular Online Shopping Experience

Oscommerce is one of the leading and widely used ecommerce software. Any web server with PHP or MySQL would support its execution. This software is very popular among the online shoppers due to its user-friendliness and can be easily customized to meet up diverse business requirements. As oscommerce uses PHP, it has made it highly interactive shopping cart software. Because of PHP, information retrieval and online databases amalgamation has become a lot easier.

Famous Open Source Ecommerce Solutions

Internet sales continue to soar every year. It is now more important than ever to have a professional, well designed and easy to follow ecommerce website if you are wishing to earn from online internet market. There are many open source ecommerce solution are available in the market which is easy to use and user friendly.

Business-to-Business (B2B) Escorts Local High-Tech SMEs

Olympics finished, Chinese local governments are turning to B2B portals, in the hope of backing up local high-tech SMEs in hot water. Shenzhen, a booming city on the south coast of China, near Hong Kong, wishes to add to its high-tech export with the aid of e-commerce. Affected by the recent global slump, Shenzhen's local businesses, mostly SMEs heavily relying on export, are in a hard time to boost revenues as usual, meanwhile with keeping costs down becoming a prominent issue.

Authorize.Net Ecommerce Software

Basically Authorize.Net Ecommerce Software helps you to make electronic payment check of your account transactions, for e commerce. Usually it is processed through your web site or the IP. Authorize.Net is a service provider payment gateway. The company has made a name in offering Ecommerce Software solution over time. Presently the Authorize.Net Ecommerce Software is being used by more than 207,000 people all over the world. It is one of the leading payment gateway service providers of the world.

A Simple and Effective Keyword Strategy for Ecommerce Sites

When it comes to ecommerce sites, there are plenty of keywords to choose from. Because sites typically follow a fairly set format, numerous pages are created between the home page and the order confirmation page. Those pages all need keywords and phrases if they are going to rank high in the search engines. So, how exactly do you choose the best keywords for each page? Here's an easy strategy to follow. (Please keep in mind that all keyphrases used in this article are for example only and have not been researched.)

Global Wholesale Product Sourcing: Verifying Australian Suppliers

Since the advent of the Internet we have experienced a scale of global trade unlike any before. You can find a supplier these days for almost every product imaginable and whilst this seemingly unlimited choice has often resulted in a win-win situation for all participants in the trade, this ease of trade has also opened a Pandora’s Box of corruption and dishonesty of sorts. This may sound daunting, but the trick is to prepare as much as reasonably possible before jumping into the world that is Global Wholesale Product Sourcing and E-Commerce.

Ever Wondered What eBay Really Is?

So what is eBay anyway? You probably already have some ideas of what eBay is, but let me elaborate a little further. One way to look at eBay is to imagine a worldwide newspaper full of classified ads listing products and services for sale. Or perhaps a “For Sale” bulletin board that millions of people can see. Of course, eBay charges sellers to put an ad up, but the exposure to the millions of worldwide buyers is worth it.