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Uniregistry will stick with risky .hiv model for now

Kevin Murphy, September 29, 2015, 15:52:28 (UTC), Domain Registries

Uniregistry has agreed to take over the new gTLD .hiv from original registry dotHIV, and said it has no plans to immediately change the business model.
“We are going to maintain the status quo, at least at the start,” said Uniregistry general counsel Bret Fausett. “We will give it a year or so on our platform and then evaluate it.”
dotHIV launched last year with what I then described as “one of the strangest and riskiest business models of any new gTLD to date.”
It’s a not-for-profit TLD with an optional “Click-Counter” service that makes microdonations, pulled from reg fees, to HIV/AIDS charities whenever somebody visits a .hiv web site.
The idea hasn’t really caught on.
When dotHIV put its ICANN contract up for auction in April it had only 345 fee-paying registrations and total revenue was $83,000.
The auction, which made it plain that the buyer would not be allowed to make a profit, failed to meet the $200,000 reserve.
Uniregistry said in a press release that while it is a for-profit company, it will continue to run .hiv as a “social enterprise”.
Fausett said the gTLD’s numbers could go up once it’s on Uniregistry’s platform.
“We think this will get a natural bump when it moves to our registrar channel,” he said. “We have over 175 registrars on our platform, which is 4x the current .HIV distribution channel.”


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Comments (1)

  1. MattH says:

    Well since domain name sales is promoting inquiries to signup for uniregistry accounts, they are using the good faith of domainer accounts on dead leads to sell these kind if oblivious extensions people really don’t care for, tough investment on this ext should be controlled by a gov

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