Chinese gTLDs Pushes New gTLD Registrations Beyond 600,000
The commencement of General Availability for two Chinese language new gTLDs saw total registrations across all new gTLDs to jump to 634,450 on 28 April.
The two Chinese language gTLDs, .xn--3ds443g (在线) and .xn--fiq228c5hs (中文网), had registration figures of 29,722 and 14,216 respectively at the end of the day, pushing them to fourth and tenth on the nTLDstats.com list of top new gTLDs. Interestingly, it was the Chinese government’s Service Development Center of the State Commission for Public Sector Reform that had by far the most registrations for each gTLD with 98.6 and 71.2 percent of all domains registered respectively.
According to DomainNameWire, about 20,000 of these registrations came from a deal TLD Registry struck with the above Chinese government department.
Overall .guru is still, for now, the leading new gTLD with 52,927 registrations and now a 8.34 percent market share, followed by .berlin (46,914) and .photography (33,771).
DotLONDON Domains Available Today
What will be one of the biggest new gTLDs to launch is launching today (29 April) as .london domains become available for registration.
It has been claimed there are 50,000 pre-registrations, although how many of these are duplicate requests for a .london domain, and how many will actually be registered, is not known. But it is almost certain that as awareness grows so will applications and come the General Availability there will be more than this registered.
Today though marks the beginning of a three-month period during which Londoners and London businesses will be given priority in applying for a domain name. Trademark holders also receive priority. Preferences during this first phase, which runs until 31 July, is given to applicants as follows:
- those with trademarks verified with ICANN’s Trademark Clearinghouse database
- Londoners (those with a physical address in the City of London or its 32 boroughs) with rights to a name (such as proof of business or trading name)
- Londoners (those with a physical address in the City of London or its 32 boroughs)
- non-Londoners.
The second phase, General Availability where equal access is given to all interested customers for all other available domain names, commences on 9 September.
During August 2014, Dot London will allocate names according to priority ranking and where there is more than one applicant in the same priority ranking for the same domain name, an auction will decide who will get the name.
“Londoners have a real sense of pride in their city and when we’ve talked to them about Dot London, they’re really excited about the prospect of putting London right at the heart of their businesses and online branding,” said Kit Malthouse, Deputy Mayor of London for Business and Enterprise and Chairman of London & Partners, the Mayor’s official promotional organisation for London. “The fact that there have already been more than fifty thousand expressions of interest in Dot London gives us real confidence that our city’s new domain will be a huge success.”
“The introduction of new domains presents an enormous opportunity for businesses to overhaul their branding and become more relevant to their customers,” said Antony Van Couvering, Chief Executive of Minds + Machines, the commercial partner of Dot London. “A Dot London web address captures the essence of London as a powerhouse of business and innovation. It’s encouraging to see how many Londoners understand how much they can gain by associating themselves more closely with one of the world’s leading brands.”
SnapNames Four Letter Domain Super Sale Auction Ends Tomorrow
SnapNames is hosting these days the Four Letter Domain Super Sale auction. The auction features 49 domain names and ends tomorrow, April 30,2014, 3:15 PM ET.
29 of the domain names already received bids,including :
Kins.com Current Bid $1,050
Wikr.com Current Bid $525
Hiti.org Current Bid $304
Xlsx.com Current Bid $300
Gsyp.com Current Bid $104
TCXD.com Current Bid $104
Anaf.net Current Bid $99
Axim.org Current Bid $99
Bigc.NET Current Bid $99
You can see the entire inventory and place your bids here .
.Asia Registry , NameJet and RightOfTheDot.com Partnered to Auction Premium 3-4 Character Numeric .Asia Domain Names
DotAsia Organisation, the company behind .Asia top-level domain name, announced that it has partnered with NameJet and RightOfTheDot.com to auction a series of never-before-release premium numeric domain names.
You can read the press release after the jump :
“DotAsia Organisation, registry operator of the ‘.Asia’ top-level-domain, announced that it has partnered with NameJet.com and RightOfTheDot.com to auction a series of never-before-released premium numeric domain names.
Through these auctions, approximately 150 three and four character numeric .Asia domain names such as 333.asia, 777.asia and 8888.asia will be offered to the public for the first time.
The auctions are scheduled to begin on May 1st, 2014 although they are all opened now for backordering and bidding
NameJet is a proven leader in the Asian auction marketplace in that approximately 30% of NameJet visitors in the past year came from Asia. NameJet has recently auctioned numerous premium Chinese .COM domains and numeric domain names, highlighted by liu.com selling for $155,688 in January 2014 on the NameJet platform. “We have had great success selling domains to Asian buyers,” said Matt Overman, General Manager of NameJet. “Numeric domain names are highly prized by our customers and we’re excited to continue to grow this inventory.”
“The recent success of NameJet in targeting buyers in Asia has been impressive,” said Edmon Chung, CEO of DotAsia. “Trying some of our numeric names on the NameJet platform makes a lot of sense. Hopefully we can take advantage of the momentum they have built. Three and four character numeric domain names are universally understood, easy to remember and very popular in the East. Not only are they short and meaningful names, they also contain a keyword and geographical identifier – Asia, increasing the chances of being found by people and search engines alike.”
“Large corporations are already using their .Asia domains with sites such as Honda.asia and LiveNation.asia,” said Monte Cahn, President and Director of RightOfTheDot.com, a leading domain industry consultancy firm specializing in new and existing premium domain sales and strategy, contention resolution and auction services. “Having participated in the successful launch of .Asia in 2008, we are excited to work with DotAsia and NameJet in managing the successful release of these never-before-registered premium .Asia domain names.”
Looking at the “Top 100 sales of 2014” as recognized by DNJournal.com, 13 out of the top 21 sales are for the China market, including 100.com which sold for $950,000. In 2013, another three-character numeric domain, 114.com, was sold for a whopping 2.1 million dollars. With expanding economies and growing access to technology, Asia has one of the world’s largest and fastest growing Internet populations. For example, China currently has more Internet users than any other country, with 600 million people online. However, that number only accounts for 42 percent of the country’s population, leaving considerable room for growth. In contrast, many Western nations already have Internet penetration rates higher than 75% percent.
For a full list premium 3-4 character .Asia domains please visit http://www.namejet.com/featuredauctions/dotasia.”
FlashCards.com Domain Sells for $250,000 via Sedo
Sedo broker, Dave Evanson announced today that he has brokered the sale of FlashCards.com for $250,000.
According to whois records,the domain name was first registered in 1995. Moreover, the domain name has been registered under privacy protection since 2009.
The domain name was sold in 2009 for $40,200 at a NameJet auction and after all the comissions were paid, the owner made a profit of aroung $175,000 .
Congratulations to both the seller and the buyer.
