New gTLD registrants now at 290

There are now 290 registered users of ICANN’s Top-Level Domain Application System, according to the organization.
As before, there’s not a one-to-one mapping of TAS accounts to gTLD applications, because each account can hold up to 50 applications.
It’s difficult to estimate how many individual gTLD applications these 290 slots represent, but I expect it could be easily double that number.
Many attendees at ICANN 43 in Costa Rica last week were expecting a last-minute rush of TAS registrations over the next 10 days before ICANN closes the doors to new registrants.
Big brands are expected to be among the last to sign up for their TAS accounts, but perhaps not for the reasons you might think.
In order to sign up for a TAS account, you have to answer the first handful of basic Applicant Guidebook questions by including the contact details of the applying entity and its officers.
For many organizations, getting this information has apparently caused difficulties internally – directors of large public companies for example don’t want to hand over their home addresses, even though ICANN has promised not to publish them.
Despite all the other controversies, vagaries and uncertainties in the Guidebook, simply confirming the name of the applicant is turning out to be a big problem for some applicants.
Some likely applicants are therefore likely to set up a shell LLC or two, along with a bunch of straw-men officers, before registering with TAS.
This, according to consultants and registries, is one of the major reasons ICANN might see a last-minute rush of applicants shortly before the March 29 registration deadline.

GMO to apply for .yokohama

GMO Registry has said it has obtained government consent to apply to ICANN for yet another Japanese city top-level domain.
This time it’s .yokohama for Yokohama, which with 3.7 million inhabitants is Japan’s second-largest city.
GMO has also been successful in bids for support for .tokyo, .osaka and .kyoto applications.
Other Japanese geo-gTLDs expected to be applied for include .okinawa, .sendai, .wakayama and .ryukyu.

Survey says 44% of brands to apply for gTLDs

Forty-four percent of major consumer brands plan to apply for dot-brand top-level domains, according to a survey carried out on behalf of Afilias.
The research, carried out in the UK and US by Vanson Bourne, found that only 82% companies were aware of their ability to participate in the the new gTLD program.
That’s a high number, but it still suggests that almost one in five companies are still completely oblivious about the program, despite months of media coverage and ICANN outreach.
Of those companies stating that they are aware of the program, 54% plan to apply and 40% are still thinking about it.
The survey covered 200 consumer-facing businesses with 3,000-10,000+ employees and was carried out in February.

ICANN has no plans to extend new gTLD window

The March 29 and April 12 deadlines to register for and submit new gTLD applications are currently not open to negotiation, according to ICANN chair Steve Crocker.
“We don’t really have any indication of sufficient reasons to change the schedule,” Crocker said at a press conference here at ICANN’s public meeting in Costa Rica this afternoon.
“We have no proposals we are actively working on to cause it to be changed at the moment,” he said. “The message needs to be understood that the application window will close April 12.”
I asked about the possibility of an extension largely because almost every registry services provider and new gTLD consultant I’ve talked to recently is expecting a mad rush of new gTLD applicants.
There are only 17 days remaining for applicants to sign up for a TLD Application System account. After March 29, applicants then have two weeks to file and pay for their applications.
Despite these pressing deadlines, many potential applicants – including dot-brands and some geographic gTLDs – have yet to make their minds up about applying.
Other confirmed applicants still haven’t selected their partners – I heard today about a city gTLD with a tender offer closing March 20, just nine days before the sign-up deadline.
ICANN said today that it has 254 registered TAS users.
A last-minute stampede for application services seems likely. With a limited number of registry back-end providers and decent consultants on the market, we could see bottlenecks.
But it seems that the ICANN board — which is the only body that could extend the schedule — has no plans to do so presently.

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.