Amazon, Uniregistry, Verisign… here’s who won the new gTLDs lottery

Amazon, Uniregistry and Verisign were among the luckiest companies competing in yesterday’s New gTLD Prioritization Draw, our preliminary analysis indicates.
ICANN spent nine and a half hours last night pulling lottery tickets from a drum in order to determine the order in which it will evaluate, negotiate and delegate new gTLD bids.
Applicants representing 1,766 applications bought tickets, a 92% turnout. Internationalized domain names were given special priority, but all other participants were treated equally.
A few hundred people — including Santa Claus, there to represent Uniregistry’s .christmas bid — showed up, with many more participating remotely.
Not many people stayed the course, however. In introductory remarks, ICANN CEO Fadi Chehade promised that the Draw would be “as boring as possible”, and it kept to his promise.
“I think it went really well,” ICANN’s new new gTLD program manager, Christine Willett, told DI today.
“I think people were really pleased and pleasantly surprised with how transparent it was,” she said. “We could have done it much faster electronically, but it wouldn’t have been as transparent.”
I’ve spent much of today drilling into the results of The Draw, using the DI PRO New gTLD Application Tracker, and here are some of my findings.
Uniregistry won the most contention sets.
Uniregistry, the portfolio applicant owned by domainer Frank Schilling, won more contention sets, in percentage terms, than other volume applicants.
This table shows the performance of the top 10 applicants (as measured by the number of contention sets they’re in).
[table id=10 /]
Getting the best draw number in a contention set is of course not indicative of any skill or of the quality of the applications, it just means the applicant got lucky.
Neither is it an indication of whether the applicant is likely to ultimately win their contention set; myriad other factors are in play.
There may even be some advantages to poorer draw numbers. We’ll get to that later.
Amazon is the luckiest portfolio applicant.
Amazon was the most successful applicant in the Draw of any company applying for 20 or more gTLDs, as measured by average prioritization numbers.
[table id=9 /]
The average for each applicant is of course affected positively by the number of IDN applications it filed, and negatively by the number of applications for which it opted out by not buying a ticket.
Amazon applied for 11 IDNs, increasing its average score, while Google did not buy tickets for 24 of its applications, substantially reducing its portfolio’s mean priority.
Likewise, Famous Four Media did not buy tickets for 12 of its applications.
Dot-brands fared less well, on average, than open gTLDs.
Single-registrant TLDs (which includes dot-brands and generic strings with single-registrant models, such as Google’s .blog application) had an average priority of 983, compared to 921 for TLDs we’ve identified as having “open” registration policies.
Verisign’s clients did better than most other registry back-ends.
Of the registry back-end providers named in more than 20 applications, China’s KNET fared best, with an average draw number of 328, according to our data. That’s to be expected of course, due to the inherent bias in the process towards IDN applications.
Of the rest, Verisign topped the list at 913 (to be expected again, given its own dozen IDN gTLD applications), followed closely by KSRegistry at 915. Minds + Machines got 930, Demand Media 942, Internet Systems Consortium 947 and Neustar 953.
OpenRegistry was unluckiest, with an average of 1,207, preceded by Google with 1,050 and GMO Registry with 1,027. CORE scored 1,000, ARI Registry Services 1,007, CentralNic 983 and Afilias 994.

Van Gelder leaves NBT, goes solo with consulting biz

Stephane Van Gelder, who co-founded the French registrar Indom in 1999, is leaving the company at the end of the year.
He’s founding a new company, Stephane Van Gelder Consulting, saying he wants to provide consulting services to domain portfolio owners, registrars and registries.
Indom was acquired by European registrar holding company Group NBT two years ago for about $22 million.
Van Gelder was until October chair of ICANN’s Generic Names Supporting Organization Council, and has recently kindly provided DI with a few provocative guest posts.

List your job openings for free on DI Jobs

DI Jobs has been given a total overhaul, and I’m pleased to announced that you can now list your domain name industry job openings completely free of charge.
You can check out the new site here.
The new service supports logos, maps, tags, and allows extensive job descriptions to be uploaded. After posting, ads can be edited by the poster via the account interface.
It’s new software, so should be considered a “beta” for the time being, but early testers tell me everything is functioning as expected so far.
It’s our intention to keep the listing service free forever, though we may introduced premium-placement options at a later date.

Europe rejects ICANN’s authority as it warns of problems with 58 new gTLDs

The European Commission has issued a list of 58 new gTLD applications it considers problematic, thumbing its nose at ICANN’s procedures for handling government objections to new gTLDs.
The list, sent to all applicants this afternoon, draws in several applications that were not already subject to Early Warnings from other GAC nations, including .sex, .sexy and .free.
Remarkably, the cover letter says that the gTLDs are not “Early Warnings” as described by the ICANN Applicant Guidebook and says the Commission may continue to work outside the established process in future:

The position outlined in this letter is without prejudice to any further action that the Commission might decide to undertake in order to safeguard the rights and interests of the European Union and of its citizens.
For the sake of clarity, the Commission does not consider itself legally bound to the processes, including the means of recourse, outlined in the new gTLD Applicant Guidebook and/or adopted by ICANN, unless a legal agreement between the latter and the Commission exists.

While that’s little more than a statement of fact — governments are of course free to do whatever they want in their own jurisdictions — it’s giving applicants much more reason to be nervous.
Even if they don’t receive GAC Advice against their applications, the EC may decide to take other action against them.
The fact that the letter also explicitly states that the warnings are definitely not official Early Warnings — meaning applicants on the list won’t even qualify for the extra refund if they drop out — sends a worrying signal that the EC is not in the mood to play by ICANN’s rules.
As for the list itself, the Commission’s letter states that it’s “non-exhaustive” and that it focuses on bids that “could possibly raise issues of compatibility with the existing legislations (the acquis) and/or with policy positions and objectives of the European Union”.
The fact that the list contains ICM Registry’s .adult and .sex applications, but not its identical .porn bid, seems to confirm that the list does not cover all the gTLDs the Commission has a problem with.
The letter (pdf) states that the Commission will attempt to enter into “further discussions” with the applicants on the list (pdf).

New gTLD marketing conference coming to New York

Momentum Consulting has announced a conference focused on marketing with new gTLDs for New York City next March.
The Digital Marketing & gTLD Strategy Congress is designed for brand managers, trademark lawyers and marketing executives, according to organizers.
The preliminary agenda was published today. It includes speakers from Citibank, which has applied for two new gTLDs, Neustar, Afilias, Domain Diction, PIR, Deloitte and Donuts.
ICANN CEO Fadi Chehade has also been invited to deliver the keynote, according to the agenda.
Lead sponsors include Afilias and Domain Diction. DI, Domain Name Wire and The Domains are media sponsors.
The event will run from March 11 to 12 in New York City. The venue does not appear to have been confirmed yet.

Right Of The Dot to offer new gTLD contention auctions with Escrow.com

New gTLD consultancy Right Of The Dot has partnered with Escrow.com on a new auction offering designed for new gTLD applicants in contention sets.
The deal, which ROTD said is exclusive, will enable the company to offer trustworthy escrow of funds as part of its auction service.
ROTD is planning three standard types of auction design — sealed-bid, ascending bid and live oral — for when mediation between gTLD applicants fails or is not wanted.
Its fees start at 4% of the winning bid, with the remainder being distributed to losing bidders.
Private auctions are expected in many cases to be the contention resolution method of choice for new gTLD applicants, because the losing bidders get paid when they drop out.
The alternative method laid out in the ICANN Applicant Guidebook would see funds flow instead to ICANN.
ROTD is the consultancy formed last year by well-known domain investors Monte Cahn (formerly of Moniker) and Michael Berkens (author of TheDomains.com).

Indian domain conference attracts 4,000

While US domain conferences are reportedly becoming sedate affairs, a domain-heavy summit that kicks off tomorrow in Mumbai has more than 4,000 signed-up attendees, according to organizers.
The two-day ResellerClub Hosting Summit, organized by Directi, may have “hosting” in the title, but its sponsors and agenda reveal a strong presence from the domain name industry.
Verisign is the major sponsor, plugging its .com and .net TLDs. Other sponsors include .org, .biz, .co, .asia and .pw.
The agenda features speakers from Public Interest Registry, ICANN, NameMedia and Directi new gTLD applicant Radix.

ARI expands its DNS business

ARI Registry Services officially announced its aggressive targeting of the DNS services market at an event in Toronto last week.
The company says it is the named DNS provider in over 450 new gTLD applications, giving it a substantial foot in the door should they be approved by ICANN.
That’s almost three times as many applications as ARI is involved with as registry provider.
“To our competitors, we are coming for you,” a tired and emotional ARI CEO Adrian Kinderis said during the launch event at a club in Toronto last Tuesday, which DI attended.
“Bring it on,” equally tired and emotional executives from larger competitors were heard to mutter in the audience.
ARI seems to be targeting just TLD operators to begin with, while competitors such as Verisign, Neustar and Afilias also offer managed DNS to enterprises.
ARI already runs the DNS for Australia’s .au.

ICANN unleashes the transparency firehose with MyICANN portal

Worried that it can be hard to find useful information on its web sites, ICANN has opened up a new portal, MyICANN.
Part firehose, part sprinkler, MyICANN.org aggregates all of ICANN’s news feeds, many of them apparently new, and enables users to filter them by the topics or languages they’re interested in.
The portal was announced by CEO Fadi Chehade during his inaugural address at the opening of ICANN 45 here in Toronto this morning.
At first, the site is designed to make all the information ICANN publishes on daily basis more accessible, but Chehade said that it will evolve into a “full process management system”, enabling two-way participation.
I’ve been playing with a MyICANN demo all weekend, and it’s already thrown up a few sources of information that even I was not aware of.
It’s quite slick; basically a fancy RSS reader, but I think it could use a few additions.
The volume of information is high enough that the ability to mark items as “read” would be handy. Also, while items are dated I think a more granular timestamp would be useful.

Donuts signs up to Architelos anti-abuse service

Architelos has a secured its first major customer win for the NameSentry anti-abuse service that it launched back in August.
Donuts, the highest-volume portfolio gTLD applicant, has signed up for the service, according to the companies.
For Donuts, which is probably the applicant that makes opponents of new gTLDs the most nervous, it’s another chance to show that it’s serious about operating clean zones.
For Architelos, it’s a pretty significant endorsement of its new technology.
The NameSentry service aggregates abuse data from multiple third-party malware, spam and phising lists and presents it in a way that makes it easier for registries shut down bad behavior.