Last week’s and this week’s new TLD launches: .Nagoya, .Fish and more -
A handful of new TLDs are launching during this holiday week.
I try to write a post each week about upcoming new TLD launches, but didn’t get around to it last week. So this week I’m going to rewind and also look at the week ahead.
Last week on Monday GMO launched .Nagoya. Nagoya is the largest city in the Chūbu region of Japan. As of today, the domain has 1,876 domains in the zone file.
Last week on Tuesday .ink launched. I was at the launch party in London. ... read more ...
Tag Archives: new tlds
Tue 1st July 2014
Mon 30th June 2014
.London ads speckled in London final week -
Here are some ads for the .London domain name spotted in London during the ICANN conference.
I spent last week in London at the ICANN meeting.
This was interesting timing because the city is gearing up for the launch of .London, which should prove to be a strong new TLD.
The open nature of the domain gives it a wider buying audience than .nyc (assuming .nyc is tough on nexus). As a geo domain, it will get a lot of local press.
I think it’s possible that this domain ... read more ...
Wed 25th June 2014
This elementary cognisance illustrates a existence of code insurance in new TLDs -
A visualization of reality for brand protection costs and new top level domain names.
One thing that’s clear from talking to various people at ICANN 50 this week is that they are surprised by the low level of defensive trademark registrations in new TLDs.
The trademark lobby expected a nightmare. New TLD applicants expected a lot less, but still more than they got.
Here’s the reality in a simple chart:
No harm done to the trademark lobby for exaggerating the ... read more ...
Tue 24th June 2014
Pictures from a biggest domain name eventuality ever -
Scenes from the first day of ICANN 50 in London.
Close to 3,500 people registered for the ICANN 50 meeting in London this week, making it the biggest domain-name related event ever.
The surge in attendance has to do with a confluence of events, especially the U.S. government’s recent plans to eventually no longer be involved with the contract related to IANA functionality.
ICANN books meeting venues well in advance, so it wasn’t able to switch up venues to accommodate ... read more ...
Why Google is apropos a domain name registrar & what it means for a business -
Google is becoming a public domain name registrar. Here’s why.
A few months ago a prominent figure in the domain name industry told me a prediction: in a short time, GoDaddy will no longer be the top domain name registrar. It will be Google.
That was quite a bold prediction given that, at the time, Google didn’t even offer domain name registrations to the public. It only referred people to other registrars.
Yesterday Google announced that it’s moving into the ... read more ...
Google’s CIO to plead new TLDs during Google I/O -
Session will help progress toward universal acceptance of new TLDs.
Google’s developer-focused conference Google I/O kicks off tomorrow, and one of the sessions will focus on new TLDs.
CIO Ben Fried will lead a presentation about new top level domain names at 1PM CDTPDT on June 25. The presentation will be streamed live on the web.
Here’s the description:
Who cares about new domain names? We do. If you want happy users, then you should too
The first new generic ... read more ...
Mon 23rd June 2014
Cleveland Clinic’s .Med domain name focus is behind on a table -
Medistry’s application for .Med is alive and well following a decision Friday by ICANN.
ICANN ruled that the Independent Objector should not have been able to file a community objection against Medistry’s application because there were no informal objections to the application.
Medistry is backed by Cleveland Clinic.
I described Medistry’s appeal in detail in this prior post.
Medistry provided letters from two groups that were thought to have objected to its ... read more ...
Fri 20th June 2014
Vistaprint might have only behind .Web by filing an Independent Review -
Vistaprint challenges (again) string similarity between .web and .webs. What does this man for the .web timeline?
Vistaprint is the latest new top level domain name applicant to invoke the Independent Review process regarding an application.
The company is upset that a domain it applied for, .webs, has been placed in a contention set with Web.com’s bid for .web following a string similarity objection.
It already filed (and lost) a Board Governance Committee “appeal” ... read more ...
Tue 17th June 2014
Minds + Machines pays dearly for .Fashion tip turn domain name -
Company essentially swaps five new TLD applications for .fashion.
Minds + Machines has paid a significant sum to win a four way auction for the .fashion top level domain name.
Although the company did not disclose the actual price, it disclosed this stunning fact: after considering its payoffs from losing .cricket, .pizza, .restaurant, .coupon and immo and its payment for .fashion, plus the refunds it received in withdrawn applications, it netted just £250,000 in ... read more ...
.XYZ 1-ups .Berlin in giveaway domain giveaways -
.Berlin more than doubles it registrations overnight. .XYZ calls.
Starting yesterday, certain registrars started offering free .Berlin domain names to customers in a promotion that will run through the end of the work week.
I posed the question if this promotion would enable .Berlin to overtake .xyz at the top of the top level domain charts.
After one day it would seem the answer could be yes. But I forgot to consider another factor: .xyz could rev up its own free ... read more ...
.Bid/.Trade domain name auction closes with no sales -
Auction attracts bidders, but none are willing to pay the reserve prices.
A domain name auction on Sedo for registry-reserved .bid and .trade domain names has closed with no sales.
The auction included 35 domain names, 10 of which received bids.
The top auction was PPC.bid at $1,050, which was below its stated reserve of between $1,000 and $5,000.
The nine other domains that received bids all closed below $1,000 but had reserves above $1,000.
Personally, I’m a ... read more ...
Rightside releases Premium Domains during reg price for .Pub -
Thousands of domains that would normally carry a premium are being offered at registration fee.
Rightside, backer of an increasingly large pool of new TLDs, is trying something different with its upcoming launch of .Pub.
The company’s previous new TLD launches have included reserved domains (called Platinum) and premium domains. The premium domains were sold through registrars but at higher prices that most domains.
For .Pub, which just entered landrush, Rightside ... read more ...
Mon 16th June 2014
.CEO selling goes from stupid to… -
New TLD not doing so well? It doesn’t suck, it’s just “limited release”.
By all measures, PeopleBrowsr’s two top level domain name launches have been flops.
.CEO has 1,244 domains in the zone file. .Best has 434.
This isn’t a huge surprise to me. .CEO launched with some silly and sexist videos. Its marketing wasn’t well executed.
That, and it’s a stupid idea for a top level domain name.
Registrars haven’t exactly rushed to carry either .CEO or .best, ... read more ...
Fri 13th June 2014
Is .xyz’s selling wrong, intelligent or both? -
Inflated numbers will result in more mainstream press mentions.
A lot has been written over the past couple weeks about .xyz and its so-called “sham” registrations.
Network Solutions is giving away free .xyz domain names and is not even requiring account holders to affirm that they want the domain names. This is drastically inflating the number of registered .xyz domain names.
As a result, .xyz is at the top of the new TLD charts. It has over 100,000 registrations. ... read more ...
Thu 12th June 2014
Wow: .Hotel row set resolved after CPE -
.Hotel applicant wipes out competition by winning community status.
In what is sure to be a shocker to many new TLD applicants, HOTEL Top-Level Domain s.a.r.l has prevailed in its Community Priority Evaluation for the .hotel domain name. It was the only applicant to elect community status and has now won the contention set.
This means the other six applicants for .hotel, including Donuts, Minds + Machines, Famous Four and Radix, have lost their chance to run .hotel.
The ... read more ...
Tue 10th June 2014
Watch: .Ninjas invade X Games -
.Ninja sponsors the X Games.
We’ve talked quite a bit on this blog about the need for top level domain name registries to promote their new domain names to end users. Here’s a great example of a company doing just that.
The X Games came to Austin for the first time this past weekend. The young audience is a great target for the .ninja domain name, and .Ninja owner Rightside was there promoting the new name.
The company sponsored a laser tag center and had a booth ... read more ...
One Domain Investor obliged for bulk of .webcam and .trade domain name registrations -
One investor responsible for most initial domain name registrations in .webcam and .trade.
A single domain name investor was responsible for the bulk of domain name registrations of Famous Four Media’s domain names launched yesterday.
.Webcam added 3,655 domain names to reach 3,678. Approximately 3,100 of them were registered at registrar Encirca by a single domain name investor.
.Trade got 3,197 registrations to reach 3,235. I count nearly 2,400 of them registered ... read more ...
Mon 9th June 2014
Sex.sells: 15 .Webcam domains sell for $175k -
.Webcam hits premium gold with large sale ahead of launch.
Famous Four Media launches its first three top level domain names today, and one of them is off to a nice start thanks to a big premium sale.
The company announced today that it has sold a package of 15 adult .webcam domain names for a total of $175,000.
While some new TLDs have failed to find their footing with premium domain sales, it seems that the adult community is very interested.
Famous Four Media probably ... read more ...
This week in new TLDs: Famous Four, Donuts…and .UK? -
At least seven new TLDs hit the market this week, and expect a lot of press around second level .uk domain names.
Famous Four Media finally gets into the mix this week as it launches its first three top level domain names: .webcam, .trade and .bid. All hit the market today.
It already made news this morning with the sale of 15 .webcam domains for a total of $175,000.
According to the Calzone.org calendar, .商城 also begins its claims period today. However, the company’s ... read more ...
Which new TLD is on top? Here’s one answer. -
Search data shows that .directory is winning in terms of total indexed pages.
No, this article isn’t about whether .xyz or .club should be considered the most registered new domain name so far.
Instead, it’s a different look at how to measure the most successful new top level domain names.
Matt Bentley, who you may recall from back in the day at Sedo, now runs a search engine optimization service called CanIRank. He collated some data on how many unique URLs on ... read more ...
Fri 6th June 2014
By a Numbers: .XYZ, .Reviews lead this week’s new TLD launches -
.XYZ clocks in at over 10,000 registrations and results from eight other new TLD launches.
I count nine new top level domain names that launched this week, as I previewed on Monday.
The top domain in terms of registrations was .xyz, although I’m not sure what the actual number of true registrations is. Technically there are 67,504 in the zone file…but most of these were given away free to Network Solutions customers who didn’t ask for them. Still, I believe ... read more ...
Thu 5th June 2014
Company pays $600,000 in auction to run .信息 tip turn domain name -
Rights to IDN domain name sell for $600,000.
Beijing Tele-info Network Technology Co. has won the first ICANN “auction of last resort” to resolve a new top level domain name contention set.
It paid $600,000 in an auction for .信息, which roughly translates to “info”. The losing party was Afilias, which operates the .info domain name.
This is the first of many planned auctions to resolve contention sets. ICANN published an auction report that includes the ... read more ...
Frank Schilling is a biggest registrant of new TLDs -
New registrant report reveals who has the most registrations in new top level domain names.
nTLDStats.com published a new “Registrant Breakdown” today [see update below]. It shows the top registrants of new top level domain names.
Coming in at number one on the list is Frank Schilling’s North Sound Names, which registered tens of thousands of names in his own TLDs in order to sell them at higher prices.
According to nTLDStats, North Sound Names has registered ... read more ...
Del Monte appeals new tip turn domain name lawsuit -
Battle over .delmonte continues.
Del Monte International is taking a dispute over new top level domain names to the U.S. Court of Appeals, Ninth Circuit.
Del Monte International (DMI) applied for the .delmonte domain name. Del Monte Corporation (DMC), which did not apply for .delmonte, filed a Legal Rights Objection against the application and won. (Both companies were once part of the same company, RJR Nabisco.)
DMI subsequently filed a lawsuit against DMC to overturn ... read more ...
Wed 4th June 2014
New Top Level Domain registration numbers are increasingly misleading -
Reporting aggregate numbers for new TLD registrations is misleading.
Some day this month one or more companies will proclaim that new top level domain name registrations have topped one million domain names.
It will be very misleading when they announce this.
If you look at the top 10 domains by zone files, at least three of them include a lot of free or registry-owned domain names.
The biggest example is .xyz. Network Solutions gave away tens of thousands of domains ... read more ...