Aussie telco to apply for dot-brand gTLD

ARI Registry Services has managed to persuade another client to come clean about its dot-brand gTLD plans.
According to a report in the Australian press, Perth-based carrier/ISP iiNet plans to apply for .iinet using ARI for application support.
The report also states that rival telco Optus is mulling its options, while Telstra is saying it will not apply.
ARI has previously announced Singapore telco StarHub and the Australian Football League as dot-brand clients.

Russians flee from IDN during first junk drop

Russia’s internationalized ccTLD, .РФ, lost 18% of its registered domains under management after its first launch anniversary, according to the registry.
Coordination Center for ccTLD said that the registry peaked at 954,012 names on December 28, but DUM had dropped to 779,264 by February 15, a 174,748 domain decline.
While the Center spun this as lower than expected – some experts had apparently predicted 25% to 30% of the early-adopter names would expire – it’s still relatively high.
Telnic deleted about 15% of its names during .tel’s first junk drop, the most recent in the gTLD space, for example.
The Russian registry has also made an eye-opening set of stats related to .РФ available on a new web site.
It reveals that just 33% of .РФ domains resolve to a web site (any web site, presumably including parking) while 29% do not even have name servers.

New gTLD applicants up to 207

With the registration deadline less than four weeks away, ICANN has revealed that it has received 207 sign-ups for generic top-level domain applications.
That’s an increase of 63 over the last week and up 163 on February 13.
As with previous announcements of this kind, certain caveats apply.
ICANN is talking about registered users of its TLD Application System. Each TAS account can be used to file up to 50 applications.
In practice I expect very few accounts will be used to file that many.

O.co loses 61% of its traffic to O.com

Overstock.com’s decision to rebrand itself O.co had a disastrous effect on the internet retailer’s traffic, according to its CEO.
Patrick Byrne told financial analysts yesterday that “O.co was my bad call” and that “about eight out of 13 people who were trying to visit us through O.co, eight were typing O.com”
It’s not clear what the source of the data is, or why the measurement given was out of 13, but it works out to 61%.
Byrne noted that people may have typed o.co instead after figuring out that o.com doesn’t work – it’s currently reserved, alongside most other single-letter .com domains, by Verisign.
His comments came as Overstock reported 2011 revenue down 3% to $1.05 billion and fourth-quarter revenue down 10% to $314 million.
Byrne said on a conference call with analysts:

There were some bad decisions for which I take responsibility in marketing O.co. O.co was odd in that it worked on one level. It did get out there into people’s heads, but what we discovered, and we turned it up slowly and we actually had nice adoption from the beginning of last year, gradually people shifting to O.co and then, but we got into the Christmas season and it worked terribly for people who were not familiar with us. There was a tremendous amount of traffic diverting to O.com and I think we’ve figured out that it was about eight out of 13 people who were trying to visit us through O.co, eight were typing O.com. Now some of them may have come, trying anyway.

The company bought o.co from registry .CO Internet for $350,000 in July 2010, during the .co relaunch. It later said it would rebrand the company on its new domain.
It even bought the naming rights to the Oakland Coliseum, which is now known as the O.co Coliseum.
Until quite recently, Overstock was an important .CO Internet reference customer. Now, I’m guessing, not so much.
Overstock has “slowed” its rebranding, reverting to referring to o.co as a “shortcut” rather than its primary address, which remains overstock.com.
The company bought o.info last year and this week launched the site as an information portal for its products. It also operates o.biz as a business-to-business site.

Directi emerges as new gTLD applicant

The India-based domain name registrar Directi plans to apply for a bunch of new generic top-level domains, using ARI Registry Services as its back-end registry provider.
Directi has set up a new entity, Radix, to handle its applications and registry business.
The number and nature of the gTLDs in Radix’s plans have not been revealed, but the company uses words like “entrepreneurial” and “ambitious” to describe the move.
Reading between the lines, I’m going to lump Radix in with the like of Minds+Machines, Donuts, and Demand Media as one of the few companies to reveal big multiple-gTLD investment plans.
These “domainer” applicants (as opposed to focused, single-string applicants) are the guys to watch post-May 1, when the list of applications is published by ICANN.
In addition to Radix, Directi owns ResellerClub, LogicBoxes, BigRock and WebHosting.info.
According to Whois, radix.com belongs to a Brazilian investment company. It does not currently resolve.
Assuming there’s no affiliation with Directi, I think this officially means that Andrew Allemann is no longer allowed to mock companies that launch services before they own the matching .com domain.

M+M in bizarre Bengaluru gTLD bid

Minds + Machines is to apply to ICANN for .bangaluru, a top-level domain for the Indian city of Bengaluru.
Parent Top Level Domain Holdings announced today that M+M will enter into a joint venture with local partner India TL Domain for the application.
Confusingly, the proposed gTLD appears to be a misspelling – or at least a very uncommon spelling – of the name of the city in question.
The city is still often known by its old colonial name, Bangalore. But in 2006 it officially renamed itself Bengaluru, its original Kannada name.
But a TLDH spokesperson has confirmed that the company is applying for .bangaluru, with an A, which does not appear to be an official name for the city in any language.
The application has the support of the Bengaluru’s mayor’s office, Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagara Palike, which is a prerequisite for city gTLD applications.
On its web site, BBMP calls the city “Bengaluru”, but in its letter of support for the M+M/ITLD bid it refers to “Bangaluru” and “dot Bangaluru”.
Is the city going to get a gTLD with a confusing Latin spelling? It certainly appears that way.
Bengaluru is India’s third most-populous city, with six million citizens. It’s known as India’s tech hub.
M+M and ITLD have also previously been linked to a joint-venture bid for .mumbai, though a question mark was raised over its governmental support last August.

Sedari working on .africa gTLD bid

Sedari has been contracted to support the controversial African Union-backed .africa top-level domain application.
The new gTLD specialist will supply UniForum with its usual suite of financial, technical and policy support services, Sedari said today.
South Africa-based UniForum was given approval for its .africa bid by the AU last week, raising questions over a longstanding rival application by DotConnectAfrica.
UniForum is already responsible for South Africa’s .za country-code top-level domain.

Four companies given OK for .osaka

While GMO Registry announced yesterday that it had been given government approval to apply for the geo-gTLD .osaka, apparently it was not alone.
Four companies were given the same approval by the Osaka Prefecture, according to local gTLD consultancy UrbanBrain.
As well as GMO, letters of non-objection have been given to UrbanBrain parent company Interlink, BusinessRalliart, and Future Spirits, UrbanBrain’s Jacob Williams said.
Interlink is a Japanese ISP and domain registrar, Future Spirits is a hosting company, and BusinessRalliart is a technology company already linked to bids for .okinawa and .ryukyu.
Whether all four actually apply is another matter entirely — cash could be saved if the companies combine their efforts now or if some of the less cash-rich applicants withdraw.

New gTLD magic number upped to 144

The number of registered new gTLD applicants has increased to 144, according to ICANN.
That’s up from 100 two weeks ago and up from 25 on January 19.
It refers to the number of registered users in the TLD Application System, the web-based tool used for filing new gTLD applications.
Each TAS slot can be used to file up to 50 applications; 144 registered TAS users could mean anything from 144 to 7,200 gTLD applications.
I err towards the lower number. Some consultants have told me they open a new account for each application they plan to file, due to some technical limitations in the system.
Most people are expecting a last-minute rush of applications — primarily hold-out dot-brand applicants — shortly before the system closes to new registrants March 29.

GMO to apply for .osaka gTLD

GMO Registry has won governmental support for a .osaka new top-level domain bid for the Japanese prefecture of Osaka.
The company announced today that the prefecture awarded it the necessary letter of support after a tender process that ran in January.
Osaka is also the name of Japan’s third-largest city. The prefecture has a population of about 8.8 million.
The .osaka application joins GMO’s steadily growing collection of proposed Japanese geo-gTLDs. It already has governmental support for .tokyo, .okinawa and .ryukyu.
It also plans to apply for .shop off its own back.