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Eight more gTLDs get Chinese licenses

Kevin Murphy, October 12, 2017, Domain Registries

Radix and MMX have had four new gTLDs each approved for use in China.
MMX has had .work, .law, .beer and .购物 (Chinese for “shopping”) approved by the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology.
Radix gained approval for .fun, .online, .store and .tech.
The approvals mean that Chinese customers of Chinese registrars will be able to actually use domains in these TLDs rather than just registering them and leaving them barren.
It also means the respective registries have to apply more stringent controls on Chinese registrants.
They’re the first new gTLDs to get the nod from MIIT since April.
Only a couple dozen Latin-script new gTLDs have been given regulatory approval to operate fully in China.
MMX’s biggest success story to date, .vip, is almost entirely beholden to the Chinese market. Before today, it was also the only gTLD in its portfolio to pass the MIIT test.
The company said in a statement it has another four strings going through the approval process.
Radix already had .site on sale in China with government approval.

Spot all the Easter eggs in this Radix mannequin viral [NSFW]

Kevin Murphy, December 7, 2016, Domain Registries

Domain registry Radix has shamelessly jumped on the “mannequin challenge” meme bandwagon, with the release of video plugging its forthcoming .fun gTLD.
It’s quite slickly produced, on the face of it shot in a single unbroken take (though I suspect there are a few edits hidden in the motion blur), but the real fun for me, as someone who’s obviously been working alone from his mother’s basement for the last decade, is having a nosey around the office of a modern tech company.
Radix, it seems, names its meeting rooms after Harry Potter characters and festoons its walls with inspirational quotes from self-help books.

There are a few visual gags too. One employee has hit the bottom of a bottle of Jack Daniels, presumably celebrating the wish-fulfilling sales figures we see on another’s monitor.
Another seems to be trying to offload a stack of banned Rs 500 and Rs 1000 notes on a colleague. Topical satire, kids!
Did you spot anything else amusing?
NB: If you’re wondering why a respectable company would produce a video backed with profane, sexist and sexually explicit lyrics, a young person I know assures me that using Rae Sremmurd’s chart-topper “Black Beatles” as the soundtrack is a standard component of the mannequin challenge meme.
UPDATE: Seems Key-Systems has done one too.

Radix acquires .fun gTLD from Warren Buffett

Kevin Murphy, October 25, 2016, Domain Registries

New gTLD portfolio player Radix has acquired the pre-launch TLD .fun from its original owner.
The company took over the .fun Registry Agreement from Oriental Trading Company on October 4, according to ICANN records.
Oriental is a party supplies company owned by Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway.
It won .fun in a private auction in April last year, beating off Google and .buzz operator DotStrategy.
It had planned to run it as a “closed generic” — keeping all the domains in .fun for itself — but those plans appeared to have been shelved by the time it signed its RA in January this year.
Evidently Oriental’s heart was not in it, and Radix made an offer for the string it found more attractive.
Radix business head Sandeep Ramchandani confirmed to DI today that .fun will be operated in a completely unrestricted manner, the same as its other gTLDs.
It will be Radix’s first three-letter gTLD, Ramchandani said. It already runs zones such as .online, .site and .space.
.fun is not yet delegated, but Radix is hoping for a December sunrise period, he said.

Warren Buffett party firm beats Google to .fun

Kevin Murphy, April 20, 2015, Domain Registries

An 80-year-old seller of party supplies, owned by Warren Buffett, has won the rights to the new gTLD .fun, after the other two applicants withdrew.
Oriental Trading Company plans to operate the gTLD as a “restricted” space where only the company and its partners can register, according to its application.
Quite why this isn’t on hold as a “closed generic”, I don’t know.
The application states .fun will be:

an authoritative Internet space for OTC, its affiliates and partners where OTC can develop an unlimited number of domain names dedicated and relevant to “fun” and to provide Internet users with content, services and products they need, while being assured of brand authenticity.

The other two applicants were Google and Dot Strategy. Both applications have now been withdrawn.
OTC sells balloons, party hats, banners and such. It was acquired by Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway in 2012 after filing for bankruptcy protection.
In other withdrawal news, games maker Konami today became the latest company to dump its plans for a dot-brand, in this case .konami.