Christopher Hofman Asks Industry Participants “What’s in the DNA of a … - Christopher Hofman of EuropeanDomainCentre.com did a big piece back in August where he got insight from several industry players on the new gtld program. He revisited these individuals with some new questions for the New Year. The primary theme was what is inherent or the DNA of a successful new gtld ? From the article: To help them on their way I asked these additional questions: – Do successful new gTLDs share common traits ? – Is there a way to spot the success of future launches in the registration ... read more ...

1st Day New gTLD Totals: .Dentist 907: .Rehab 293 - Two new gTLD went into General Availability yesterday on Christmas eve day. Including all registrations by trademark holders in Sunrise and those who paid an additional fee to register domain names before GA in the Early Access Program (EAP) here are the total number of registrations after the first day of GA: .Dentist 907 .Rehab 293 We noted yesterday on Twitter that only 25 domain names in .Rehab were registered in Sunrise and the EAP period combined, going into GA There is already a .Dental new ... read more ...

Nissan Loses Its 2nd Domain Proceeding In a Row on New gTLD Nissan.email - Nissan has lost the 2nd URS in the last three days after winning 10 in a row. This time Nissan lost the Uniform Rapid Suspension (URS) on the domain name Nissan.email The examiner Kendall C. Reed held: “The Respondent holds the domain name as inventory, which is not inherently wrongful and can represent a legitimate interest, provided however that, at a minimum, the intended use would not constitute a bad faith use. As is noted below, Respondent’s intended use is not inevitably a bad faith use. Registrant ... read more ...

Donuts Beats Google to The New gTLD .Tours As Google Withdraws .Tour - Another indirect new gTLD contention set was resolved as Donuts won the new gTLD .Tours against Google’s application for .Tour. Google has withdrawn its application for .Tour which is applied for Donuts which applied for .Tours was put into a indirect contention set with Google’s application for .Tour At the end of the day Google withdrew its application for .Tour, leaving Donuts the only applicant for .Tours There will be no .Tour We do not have any information as to how the contention set was ... read more ...

.Club Passes .Berlin & Moves Into 2nd Place As The Most Registered New … - .Club has just passed .Berlin and is now the second most registered new domain extension. According to ntldstats.com, .Club now has 156,821 domain names registered passing .Berlin which has 155,123 domain names registered. .Berlin offered free domain names for approximately 2 days and about 75,000 of the 155,000 domain names were registered for free. The .Club team have literally been traveling the world, several times over, during 2014. (In terms of disclosure our regular readers know that a consulting ... read more ...

Zero to 60 in a Split Second: Coffee.Club Goes From a Domain Name to a … - At first glance, as a coffee lover with a 6-month subscription that just started,  I certainly like the business model. Coffee.club lets you choose ... read more ...

Owner of Baby.com Wins .Baby For $3.1 Million Dollars. - Johnson Johnson which has owned and advertised  Baby.com for many years, just won the ICANN Last Resort Auction for the new gTLD .Baby for 3,088,888 Google, Minds + Machines, Donuts, Radix and Famous Four lost in the auction and unlike private auctions will not get any share of the winning bid. In the other ICANN  last resort auction the Canadian Real Estate Association beat Afilias for .MLS, paying $3,359,000. Still seems to me that the ICANN auctions are going to less money than the private ... read more ...

The Real Facts About New gTLDs - Many with financial interests in new gTLDs, such as Donuts, have painted a rosy picture of how new gTLDs create greater availability of meaningful domain name options that the global masses have been waiting for. Their message seems to be: FINALLY, there is an alternative to .com in new domain extensions like .guru, .photography, .blackfriday and .tips. But, the reality is that we have always had options other than .com to choose from when registering a domain name. The challenge isn't choice, ... read more ...

.XYZ Is The 1st New gTLD To Break 750000 Registered Domains - .XYZ has become the first new gTLD to break through the 750,000 mark for domain name registrations. According to the .XYZ registry the number of registered domain names is 750,073 The 750,000th domain name to be registered was Chez.XYZ that was registered today at the domain name registrar Gandi.net. We at TheDomains.com were the first to figure out that NetworkSolutions,  which is  part of the Web.com group (WWWW), were stuffing free .XYZ domain names into customer’s accounts when the extension ... read more ...

NCC Group to Open Trust Domain For Registration - NCC Group plc (LSE: NCC, “NCC Group” or "the Group"), the international, independent provider of Escrow, Assurance and Domain Services, announces that companies will be able to submit their requests to become part of the .trust community on 16 December 2014.   NCC Group’s .trust generic Top Level Domain (gTLD) has now begun a 90-day “Name Collision” and will shortly enter into a “Sunrise Period”, as defined by ICANN, to protect trademarked brands. Rob Cotton, NCC Group CEO, commented: “After ... read more ...

1st Day New gTLD Totals .immo 5274; .Business 3292; .Software 3068; .Network … - 6 New gTLD’s went into their first day of General Availability (GA) yesterday where they could be registered on a first come, first served basis. Including all domain names registered during the Sunrise Period by trademark holders and in the Early Access Period (EAP) for those who were willing to pay a one time fee for early access more than 17,000 domain names were registered across the six new domain extensions which is the best first day performance by non-city new gTLD’s for a long time. Here ... read more ...

New gTLD Pass 3.5 Million But How Many Are Third Party Paid Registrations … - The number of new gTLD registrations just crossed the 3.5 million mark according to ntldstats.com The question is how many of these 3.5 Million new gTLD domain names are paid for registrations made by third parties unrelated to the registry So we are basically backing out any  known free registrations, any domain name registered to the registry itself or to parties related to the registry in which case we are talking about the principal owners of the registry, any domain registered and reserved ... read more ...

Sedo Transactions Total $1 Million As a Record Number 60% Of Domains Sell … - Over the past week, 458 transactions took place on Sedo’s marketplace and via SedoMLS, totaling $1 Million dollars 60% of total sales were the result of Buy Now listings which I believe is a record high for Sedo or anyone else in the industry Highlights of public sales are: · Top .coms: restaurantuniforms.com at 20,000 USD · Top ccTLD: etfs.de at 11,900 EUR · Top “other” TLD: joins.net at 3,500 EUR I wish I can pick out a favorite buy but I have nothing off this list:   ... read more ...

Domain Graffiti Launched by Industry Veterans - At the TRAFFIC conference in October, I learned about a new domain industry company called Domain Graffiti, which was founded by Braden Pollock and James Wester. Domain Graffiti is a domain brokerage that helps add value to domain names by working on concept creation, drafting of a business summary, logo creation, and other value adds on behalf of the domain name owner. Domain Graffiti’s team of brokers are focused on representing higher value (six and seven figure) domain names. In addition, ... read more ...

How Will new gTLD’s Rank? Coffee.Club is on 1st Page of Google 1 A Week … -                               Ever since the roll out of the new gTLD program was announced one of the big questions everyone asked is how domain names using new gTLD’s would rank in the search engines against more established extensions like .com, .net and .org? Coffee.club, which just launched a week ago has landed on the 1st page of  Google organically. Yes they are also advertising under the key term, but they also are ranking on the 1st page of Google organically beating out ... read more ...

Uniregistry Wins gTLD .Cars Beating Donuts, DERcars - Uniregistry which has lost a bunch of recent new gTLD auctions, won a private auction for .Cars beating Donuts and DERcars which is Dominion Enterprises which applied for several new gTLD’s. If your wondering why .car and .cars is in the contention set, well its a long and in typical ICANN fashion pretty confusing. The short story  is that Google had filed a string confusion objection with ICANN against the three applicants for .Cars losing two and winning one and then there was an reconsideration ... read more ...

Seven key takeaways from ICANN 51 in Los Angeles - The 51st international meeting of the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) formally concluded on Thursday, October 16, 2014, in Los Angeles. As always, the ICANN community discussed several high-profile topics during the meeting, all of which are relevant to registry operators, new generic top-level domain (gTLD) applicants and brand owners alike, including: two-character names and geographic names; string confusion objection review, indirect contention, and ... read more ...