Internet Grew by 4 Million Domains in 4Q 2014, Reaching 288 Million Worldwide - The fourth quarter of 2014 closed with a base of 288 million domain name registrations across all top-level domains (TLDs), an increase of four million domain names, or 1.3 percent over the third quarter of 2014, according to Verisign's latest Domain Name Industry Brief. Registrations have grown by 16.9 million, or 6.2 percent, year over year. Total country-code TLD (ccTLD) registrations were 134.0 million domain names, a 1.5 percent increase quarter over quarter, and an 8.7 percent increase ... read more ...

VeriSign Inc.: Internet Grows to 288 Million Domain Names in the Fourth Quarter … - Tickers: VRSN MANT YNDX IACI NICE HPQ DELL AKAM  RESTON, VA -- (Marketwired) -- 03/12/15 -- VeriSign, Inc.(NASDAQ: VRSN) , a global leader in domain names and Internet security, today announced four million domain names were added to the Internet in the fourth quarter of 2014, bringing the total number of registered domain names to 288 million worldwide across all top-level domains (TLDs) as of Dec. 31, 2014, according to the latest Domain Name Industry Brief. The increase of four ... read more ...

Internet Grows to 288 Million Domain Names in the Fourth Quarter of 2014 - RESTON, VA--(Marketwired - March 12, 2015) - VeriSign, Inc. (NASDAQ: VRSN), a global leader in domain names and Internet security, today announced four million domain names were added to the Internet in the fourth quarter of 2014, bringing the total number of registered domain names to 288 million worldwide across all top-level domains (TLDs) as of Dec. 31, 2014, according to the latest Domain Name Industry Brief. The increase of four million domain names globally equates to a growth rate of 1.3 ... read more ...

Don’t Confuse Brand and Category-Label New gTLDs - The domain name industry gets brand and label confused. A brand sums up what makes a company unique to its customers. A label tells what category a company goes in; it sums up what the product has in common with other products of that type. Sedan and SUV are category labels; Volvo is a brand, one that means safety to customers. Similarly Tesla Motors has its distinctive "Tesla" brand, but it introduces products to its users as "electric vehicles." Another way of saying the above: generic Top-Level ... read more ...

New ‘.bank’ domain available in mid-2015 - New opportunities for the banking community are coming this year. In the fall of 2014, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), the entity responsible for coordinating internet domain names, granted fTLD Registry Services, LLC’s (fTLD) application to operate a new generic top-level domain name (gTLD). fTLD will begin operating and managing the domain name “.bank,” which will be made available to members of the banking community in the summer of 2015. fTLD has ... read more ...

gTLD update: .adult and .porn on the horizon - The Internet was in a tizzy back in 2011 when ICM Registry began selling .xxx domain names for use by adult entertainment providers, selling nearly 250,000 addresses and netting more than $50 million. Just last year the registry sold sex.xxx for $3 million dollars, the highest price paid for a non-dot-com address. Which leads us to wonder if the addition of .adult and .porn will generate the same concerns and profits. ICM Registry has set aside nearly 1,000 domain names such as sex.porn, ... read more ...

Rightside Group, Ltd. Insider Transaction Update: Wayne Maclaurin Sells 1295 … - Rightside Group, Ltd. (NASDAQ:NAME), Maclaurin Wayne M., Officer (Chief Technology Officer) of Rightside Group, Ltd., unloaded 1,295 shares at an average price of $7.35 on March 5, 2015. The total amount of the transaction was worth $9,518, according to the disclosed information with the Securities and Exchange Commission in a Form 4 filing. Maclaurin Wayne M. now owns 99,426 shares of Rightside Group, Ltd.. Shares of Rightside Group, Ltd. (NASDAQ:NAME) ended the trading session with a loss ... read more ...

Second Middle East DNS Forum Takes Place in Amman Tomorrow – ag-IP - Home / Second Middle East DNS Forum Takes Place in Amman Tomorrow / By Staff Writer   AMMAN – The Regional Vice President in the Middle East of Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) Mr. Baher Esmat stated that the number of new generic Top-Level Domains (gTLDs) could reach 1000-1400 which imposes some technical challenges on the Corporation.  In a press conference organized today for launching the second ... read more ...

Google’s Domain Name Land Grab: Consumer Convenience Or Coercive … - Internet naming decisions are the sort of Internet plumbing inside baseball that only interests policy wonks and marketing mavens. That is until an 800 pound gorilla like Google Google decides to pay $25 million for a single generic top-level domain name (gTLD). Buying “.app” for almost four-times the previous record for a gTLD not only raised eyebrows, but questions about the strategy behind Google’s expansive and expensive domain name land grab. Although the most costly, .app is ... read more ...

Google Chose to Win .APP in an ICANN Auction for $25m – Why? - For those who don't know, there are typically 3 methods of resolving contention sets in the new gTLD world: 1. Private deals – This method is used often for small contention sets of 1 to 3 applicants where straightforward negotiation is possible. Sometimes, revenue sharing deals are agreed, a fee can be agreed in exchange for other parties to withdraw their applications, or other types of barter deal are used such as 'swaps' where one party withdraws from one application and another withdraws ... read more ...

.PORN and .ADULT Join .XXX to Form Unsexy Threesome for Brand Owners - Yesterday marked the sunrise launch of the .porn and .adult generic top-level domains (gTLDs), which join .xxx in the top-level domain name space as gTLDs targeted mainly at online purveyors of adult entertainment.  As with .xxx, the introduction of these adult-themed gTLDs presents yet another annoyance for trademark owners already fatigued by the weekly onslaught of gTLDs introduced over the past couple of years pursuant to ICANN’s expansion of the domain name space.  Also as with ... read more ...

Insider Transaction Update: Rightside Group, Ltd. Director Sells Company Shares - Rightside Group, Ltd. (NASDAQ:NAME), The Director, of Rightside Group Ltd, Panos E David had unloaded 685 shares at $7.01 per share in a transaction on February 25, 2015. The total value of transaction was $4,802. The Insider information was revealed by the Securities and Exchange Commission in a Form 4 filing. Rightside Group, Ltd. (NASDAQ:NAME) suffered a loss, declining 0.42% in its share price. The bears locked in total control while fighting the bulls throughout the day, ... read more ...

Radix Adds .Online to Growing Portfolio of New gTLDs – .CO.COM Happy With … - Radix Registry is celebrating the addition of .online to their portfolio of solely owned new gTLDs that already includes .website, .host and .space among others. Radix originally joined ... read more ...

ICANN switches off dot-word admin portal amid security leak scare - Global domain-name overlord ICANN has found another security hole in its systems. This time, confidential data on companies vying for new dot-word domains may have been snooped on by rivals logged into ICANN's catch-all portal – meaning commercially sensitive information as well as important technical details on the internet's expansion were at risk. The org has since taken the vulnerable web apps offline. ... read more ...

Radix Assumes Full Ownership of .online - Radix, one of the leading registries in the new gTLD space, has reached an agreement with auction partners Tucows and Namecheap to assume full ownership and operation of the .online TLD. Radix has already launched some of the most recognizable new gTLDs with .website, .host, .press and .space. With .online, they now own the first truly generic, truly global, viable alternative to .com. “Online” is the most commonly used word to end domain names, with over 550K .com domain ... read more ...

The Dot Green gTLD and the Domain Name Delusion That Foretells General … - I admire Annalisa Roger. I know from my single email interaction with her that she means well. Nonetheless, dot Green apparently ranks below 330 in the list of operational new gTLDs with an apparent total of 117 domains, give or take a few. Why is this the case? It seems to me that dot Green is one the few new gTLDs that actually deserves support. Annalisa states the following in her CircleID item on February 27 that "With [Dave Maddocks'] analogy, it's easy to understand that a brand name ... read more ...

CMO Offers Fresh View on New gTLDs: "They’re a Channel, Not Just a Label" - Several years ago, I had a very interesting conversation with a talented marketing executive from Portland, Oregon who joined the DotGreen Community, Inc. Board of Directors. When I told him about the new gTLD program, which was then under development at ICANN, Dave Maddocks immediately understood the value of what new gTLDs would mean to all businesses that have an online location. While so many of us in the domain or Internet industry think of website addresses as locations, or as real-estate, ... read more ...

More Evidence Why Doing Good Pays Off and Love Doesn’t - The new gTLDs program can't succeed unless two things happen. The approved registries must do good, and ICANN must weed out applicants who are in love. This is to say that registries should put users' good first, and applicants shouldn't get the nod unless their motive is economic and/or social viability. A recent study reveals that leading companies have enjoyed healthy profits because they made doing good their strategic foundation. The authors analyzed the core values of 34 companies from ... read more ...

Brands urged to do more to stop ‘predatory pricing’ in next gTLD round - Tim Lince Elisa Cooper, vice president of domain product marketing for MarkMonitor, has urged brands to do more to encourage ICANN to tackle predatory pricing during new gTLD sunrise periods. Failure to do so may mean that trademark owners are further held to ransom during the second wave of new gTLDs. She told World Trademark Review that it’s “not ... read more ...

Here Is Our Run Down As New gTLD’s Top 4.5 Million Registrations - .Science added another 14K+ domain names registrations yesterday in its second day of general availability, putting the number of new gTLD registrations over the 4.5 million mark. New gTLD registrations still have a large percentage of free, almost free, very low cost and related party registrations. .Science domain names which just launched two days ago, are still being registered for free at Alpnames.com AlpNames.com now has registered 26,656 of the 27,500 .Science domain names or over 96% of ... read more ...

New podcast available: Evicting the typosquatters - Trevor Little In the second World Trademark Review podcast we talk to Nick Nikiforakis, co-author of a groundbreaking new study into the rise of online typosquatting abuse. We talk about the scale of the typosquatting problem, what trademark owners can do to minimise the damage to their brands and the effect that new gTLDs could have on typosquatting ... read more ...

Start Spreading the .News – Rightside Acquires One of the Most Attractive New … - the crowd in a big way. Everyone is touched by news in one way or another - people want to hear and see it, businesses and organization want to spread it and the web is the most efficient way ... read more ...