XYZ reveals .monster gTLD launch dates

XYZ.com has quietly unveiled its launch plan for its recently acquired gTLD, .monster.
General availability, with no eligibility requirements, is due to begin April 1.
The 30-day sunrise period is due to begin in just a couple of weeks — February 18.
.monster was acquired late last year from recruitment web site Monster.com, which had intended to operate it as a dot-brand, for an undisclosed sum.
Before the acquisition closed, Monster and ICANN amended the registry contract to cut the special dot-brand terms that would have removed the need for a sunrise period and would have prevented the domain being sold to regular registrants.
XYZ also intends to run a week-long Early Access Period — where premium prices apply — starting March 21.
I quite like the idea of .monster as an open gTLD.
While it’s certainly not going to perform as well volume-wise as .xyz, say, I can see it fitting nicely into the “quirky” niche occupied currently but the likes of Donuts’ .guru and .ninja — not really viable as standalone TLDs, but decent enough as part of a portfolio.
The company is pitching the TLD as “a domain for creative thinkers, masters of their craft, and modern-day renegades.”

2 Comments Tagged: .monster, .xyz, acquisition, launch, monster.com, sunrise, xyz.com

Huge batch of Afilias TLDs approved in China

Seventeen Afilias-operated gTLDs have been approved for use in China.
The Ministry of Industry and Information Technology announced yesterday that the following Afilias-owned TLDs now have its official seal of approval: .archi, .bio, .black, .blue, .green, .lotto, .organic, .pet, .pink, .poker, .promo, .ski, .vote, .voto and .移动 (xn--6frz82g, means “mobile”),
Also approved are .asia and .网站 (.xn--5tzm5g means “website”), which to the best of my knowledge are not owned by Afilias but are quite closely managed by it.
All 17 were approved via the same Shanghai-based Afilias subsidiary, due to MIIT’s local presence requirements.
Chinese approval means Chinese registrants using Chinese registrars will be permitted to have their names resolve in China, subject to the country’s rather stringent censorship practices.
It’s the first batch of Afilias names to get the nod since April 2017, when .info, .pro and .mobi were approved.

2 Comments Tagged: afilias, china, miit

.SE sells off $3.2 million registrar biz

Swedish ccTLD registry IIS has sold off its registrar business, .SE Direkt, to a local registrar for an undisclosed sum.
The buyer is Loopia, a web hosting company focused on the Swedish market. It will take over in a couple of weeks.
IIS said that starting February 12, lasting a few days, its customers’ domains will be transferred to Loopia. No disruption is expected.
.SE Direkt had 121,836 .se domains under management and 87,852 customers at the last count. Its 2018 revenue was expected to be around $3.2 million.
Loopia has around 225,000 customers. It does not appear to be ICANN-accredited, but you don’t need to be to sell ccTLD names.
It might actually be good news for departing .SE Direkt customers. Loopia sells .se domains for SEK 149 ($16.50), whereas .SE Direkt’s list price is SEK 270 ($29).
IIS said the sale was finalized following a review of competing bids following its October announcement that the unit was up for sale.
The .SE Direkt business has been on the decline for the best part of a decade, apparently deliberately. It was created as part of .se’s transition to a two-tier registry-registrar model in 2009.
IIS had expected to divest the business earlier, but customers did not jump ship as fast as expected.

Comment Tagged: .se, .se direkt, acquisition, cctlds, iis, loopia

ICANN picks Seattle for public meeting

ICANN will hold one of its 2021 public meetings in Seattle, Washington.
The organization’s board of directors directed the CEO to start talks with the yet-unnamed venue at its meeting at the weekend.
The meeting, ICANN 72, will be the 2021 Annual General meeting and will be held from October 23 to 28.
Believe it or not, it will be the first time a public ICANN meeting has been held on the mainland United States since the LA meeting in 2014.
That’s quite a feat, given that ICANN’s definition of “North America” basically only has two countries in it.

2 Comments Tagged: ICANN, icann 72, seattle

ICANN approves two new TLDs, including THAT one

ICANN’s board of directors has given the nod to two more country-code TLDs.
The eight-year-old nation of South Sudan is finally getting its possibly controversial .ss, while Mauritania is getting the Arabic-script version of its name, موريتانيا. (.xn--mgbah1a3hjkrd), to complement its existing .mr ccTLD.
Both TLDs were approved by ICANN after going through the usual, secretive IANA process, at its board meeting at the weekend.
The recipient of موريتانيا. is the Université de Nouakchott Al Aasriya, while .ss is going to National Communication Authority, a governmental agency.
As previously noted, .ss has the potential to be controversial due to its Nazi associations, and the fact that Nazis are precisely the kind of people who have trouble finding TLDs that will allow them to register names.
But none of that is ICANN’s business. It simply checks to make sure the requester has the support of the local internet community and that the string is on the ISO 3166 list.
The Mauritanian IDN has already been added to the DNS root, while .ss has not.

Comment Tagged: .ss, cctlds, iana, ICANN, idns, xn--mgbah1a3hjkrd, موريتانيا.

MMX sees better profits than expected

Portfolio registry MMX saw 2018 financial results slightly ahead of expectations, the company told investors yesterday.
It now expects revenue to be over $15.5 million for the year, compared to $14.3 million in 2017. Operating EBITDA, its preferred profitability indicator, will be “marginally ahead of market expectations”.
It expects revenue from renewals — which MMX has been trumpeting as a key indicator of stability — to be $9.4 million, compared to $4.8 million in the prior year.
That’s mainly due to the $3.4 million contribution of recently acquired porn TLD specialist ICM Registry. Without ICM, renewal revenue was still up 20% though.
The company’s exposure to the Chinese market has also been reduced. It now contributes 36% of sales, compared to 50% in 2017.
Volatile one-off premium domain sales are also on the decrease in terms of revenue share — 15% in 2018 compared to 38% in 2017.
Its full audited results will be published later in the quarter.

Comment Tagged: earnings, financials, icm registry, mmx. minds + machines

Pay up or sell up, ICANN tells failing new gTLD

ICANN has responded to a request for it to reduce the $25,000 annual fee it charges gTLD registries.
The answer is no.
That wholly unsurprising reply came in a letter from registry services director Russ Weinstein to John McCabe, CEO of failing new gTLD operator Who’s Who Registry.
McCabe, in November, had asked ICANN to reduce its fees for TLDs, such as its own .whoswho, that have zero levels of abuse. ICANN fees are the “single biggest item” in the company’s budget, he said.
His request coincided with ICANN commencing compliance proceedings against the company for failure to pay these fees
Weinstein wrote, in a letter (pdf) published today:

We sympathize with the financial challenges that some new gTLD registry operators may be facing in the early periods of these new businesses. New gTLD operators face a challenging task of building consumer awareness and this can and may take significant time and effort.

But he goes on to point out that the $25,000-a-year fee was known to all applicants before they applied, and had been subject to numerous rounds of public comment before the Applicant Guidebook was finalized.
Weinstein writes:

The AGB made clear that evaluation phase was to determine whether an applicant had the requisite technical, operation and financial capabilities to operate a registry, and was not a assessment nor an endorsement of a particular business plan.

It’s pretty clear that the .whoswho business plan has failed. It’s sold no more than a handful of non-defensive domains over the four years it has been available.
Weinstein concludes his letter by pointing out that all new gTLD registries are free to terminate their contracts for any reason, and that it’s perfectly permissible under ICANN rules to sell your contract to another registry.
ICANN told Who’s Who earlier this month that it has until February 10 to pay its overdue fees or risk having its contract terminated.

3 Comments Tagged: .whoswho, compliance, fees, ICANN, new gTLDs, termination, who's who registry

Brexit boost for Irish domains

Irish ccTLD .ie saw record growth in 2018 after the registry relaxed its registration rules.
According to IEDR, there were 262,140 .ie domains at the end of the year, an increase of 10.4%.
There were 51,040 new registrations, a 29% increase, the registry said.
Almost 10,000 names are registered to Brits (excluding Northern Ireland), which IEDR chalks down to Brexit, saying:

Interestingly, new .ie registrations from Great Britain increased by 28% in 2018 compared to the previous year, a fact that may correlate with enduring Brexit uncertainty and suggests some migration of British businesses to Ireland.

The Irish Passport Service has reportedly seen a similar increase in business since the Brexit vote.
Irish registrar Blacknight also believes its own pricing promotions and marketing efforts are partly responsible for the increase in .ie reg numbers.
The .ie eligibility rules were changed in March last year to make it simpler to provide evidence of a connection to Ireland.

Comment Tagged: .ie, blacknight, brexit, cctlds, iedr

Brexit won’t just affect Brits, .eu registry says

European Union citizens living in the UK could find their .eu domain names shut off in the next few months, EURid has said.
In a just-published update to its Brexit guidance, the registry has told Brits that they stand to lose their domains on May 30, should the UK leave the EU with no transition deal.
That would give them just two months to transfer their domains to an entity in one of the remaining 27 member states.
On May 30, affected domains will be removed from the .eu zone file and will stop resolving, technically entering “withdrawn” status.
It will be no longer be possible to renew these domains, nor to transfer any domains to a UK-based registrant.
All affected domains — over 273,000 at the last-published count — will be deleted and released back into the available pool, in batches, following March 30, 2020.
This could be good news for domainers in the EU27, given that the deleted domains may include potentially valuable generics.
But EU27 citizens currently residing in the UK, who for whatever reason are unable to transfer their names to an address in their home country, will be treated at first in the same way as Brits. EURid said:

There may be situations of EU citizens, who at present are residing in the UK and have registered a .eu domain name. These citizens would become ineligible as a result of the UK withdrawal and would, therefore lose their eligibility for a .eu domain name, but might become eligible again when the new .eu regulatory framework comes into force later this year. At present, such individuals will experience a disruption of service from 30 May 2019, as a result of the withdrawal of the name.

The registry said last month that new regulations are coming that would allow EU citizens to register .eu domains no matter in which country they live.
Before these regulations kick in, these EU registrants will find their names unresolvable.
By May 30, starving Brits will be far too preoccupied with beating each other to death in the streets for scraps of the country’s last remaining baguette, trading sexual favors for insulin, and so on, so .eu domains will likely be among the least of their no-deal Brexit concerns.
The situation for registrants if the UK leaves the EU with a deal is less urgent. Their domains will stop functioning March 2, 2021, and from January 1, 2022, will be released back into the pool for registration.
Brits would be able to register new .eu domains all the way through the transition period, until the end of December 2020.
It’s not beyond the bounds of possibility that Brits could be grandfathered in to .eu eligibility, should the UK leave on terms similar to European Economic Area members such as Norway, which are eligible under the existing rules.
Currently, it’s anyone’s guess whether we’re leaving with a deal or without. The government’s proposed transition plan was defeated earlier this month in an unprecedented revolt by members of parliament, which leaves no-deal enshrined in the statute books as the default option.
The government is currently attempting to talk its MPs into switching sides, but many suspect it’s just attempting to run down the clock to the March 29 Brexit deadline, compelling MPs to vote for the transition at the eleventh hour as the lesser of two evils.
The opposition is currently urging the government to rule out a no-deal scenario, to discourage British businesses from executing potentially irreversible and damaging exit plans, but the government is reluctant to do so, fearing it could weaken its negotiating hand with the EU27.
The far more-sensible option — giving British voters the opportunity to change their minds with a referendum — appears to be gaining support among MPs but still seems like a pipe dream.
There’s some evidence that the UK is now officially a demographically Remain country, simply due to the number of elderly racists who have died, and the number of youthful idealists who have reached voting age, since the original 2016 referendum.

Comment Tagged: .eu, brexit, eurid

New domain price guessing game warns against “asshole domain squatters”

You’re a domain expert, right? Think you could accurately guess which of two randomly selected names is on sale for the larger amount of money on the secondary market?
A simple new game, which appears to have been published in the last week or so, will now allow you test your l33t domain evaluation skillz.

Click the name you think is the more expensive. The game will reveal both prices and keep track of your score.
You can apparently carry on guessing as long as you want. I went 20 rounds and scored an unimpressive 10 points. I’m not sure whether I should draw any conclusions from this 50:50 hit rate.
It appears that author Martin O’Leary sourced his pricing data from the landing pages of the domains themselves. If you dig around in the code you’ll find a JSON data set with just over 100,000 names and prices.
It doesn’t sound like he’s a domainer, either. A constant footer on the app reads: “please don’t buy any of these domains, they’re all terrible and you’d be supporting asshole domain squatters”.
UPDATE: The original version of this story incorrectly stated that these names had sold for the prices listed.

5 Comments Tagged: domain price guessing game