.me beating .co in start-ups?

The .co top-level domain may have more registrations, but more tech start-ups are opting for .me domain names, according to an informal study.
Doctoral student Thomas Park compiled a list of 1,000 start-ups added to TechCrunch’s CrunchBase database last year and found that entrepreneurs chose .co 1% of the time, versus 1.7% for .me.
As caveats, the difference between the two TLDs only works out to seven companies and .me, which launched in 2008, does of course have a two-year head start over .co.
I’m also guessing that CrunchBase has an English-language bias, which could skew the results. While .co has meaning in more countries it lacks the call-to-action punch of .me in English.
Nevertheless, I think the results are interesting because .CO Internet heavily targets start-ups in its marketing and currently has twice as many domains under management (over 1.1 million) as doMEn, the Afilias/Go Daddy joint-venture .me registry.
Park’s results show that .me had a 0.50% share in 2010 and a 0.80% share in 2009 while .co managed to get one company (0.10%) on the list during the half of 2010 it was live.
The survey found that .com is the runaway first choice for entrepreneurs, with about 85% of the start-up market, but you knew that already.

4 Comments Tagged: .co, .co internet, .me, afilias, domen, go daddy

Moniker and SnapNames join Key-Systems stable

KeyDrive has acquired rival registrar Moniker and rival aftermarket player SnapNames from Oversee.net, according to a statement on the company’s web site.
The deal, which closed in January, would make the combined company the sixth-largest ICANN-accredited registrar, with over 5.4 million domains under management, KeyDrive said.
KeyDrive formed with the merger of German registrar Key-Systems and aftermarket services provider NameDrive last July. It’s based in NameDrive’s native Luxembourg.
The deal gives the primarily European company an additional footprint in the US market. Moniker is based in Florida, SnapNames in Oregon.
It’s a not-too-soon exit for Moniker, which had a disappointing 2011 largely defined by the super-fast churning of domains under management and the regular canning of staff.
I’ve been hearing rumors that the two Oversee units were on the auction block for months.
It’s the fifth significant piece of M&A in the registrar market in the last six months, following the sale of Go Daddy and Group NBT to private investors, Tucows’ acquisition of EPAG and NetSol’s move to Web.com
Terms of the acquisition have not been disclosed. Indeed, there does not appear to have been an official announcement yet, beyond the KeyDrive home page.
The deal was first reported by DomainNameNews.
More details as they come in.

Comment Tagged: acquisitions, key-systems, keydrive, moniker, namedrive, oversee.net, snapnames

Exclusive: StarHub confirms dot-brand gTLD bid

Singapore telecommunications firm StarHub will become the fifth company to publicly reveal plans for a “dot-brand” generic top-level domain.
The company, which offers broadband internet, cable TV and mobile telephony and has annual revenue of about $2 billion, is set to announce tomorrow that it will apply to ICANN for .starhub.
It’s the first confirmed dot-brand applicant since ICANN opened the application window January 12. It’s also the first since Neustar announced its own plans last June.
StarHub plans to use the gTLD to enable domain names such as tv.starhub and broadband.starhub.
ARI Registry Services has the contract to run its registry back-end and Melbourne IT Digital Brand Services is its application consultant.
Oliver Chong, assistant vice president of brand and marketing communications at StarHub, said:

We believe the ‘.starhub’ Top-Level Domain will deliver clear marketing and advertising benefits to StarHub, such as improved online brand recall and a more intuitive consumer experience with easy to remember domain names such as ‘mobile.starhub’. We also anticipate potential Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) benefits by operating a more targeted and relevant naming system that is clearly matched with our website content.

To date, only Deloitte, Canon and Hitachi have publicly confirmed corporate dot-brand applications.
Registry services provider Neustar also wants .neustar, but its announcement was a little self-serving so I’m not sure that it “counts”.
We’re also aware of some other likely candidates, such as IBM and Unicef, but most companies are playing their cards pretty close to their chests.
ARI CEO Adrian Kinderis said he hopes the announcement of .starhub will “open the floodgates” for other Asian companies to apply for their own new dot-brand gTLDs.
While it’s a significant revelation – at least likely to drive StarHub’s competitors into action if they’re not already – similar predictions were made when Canon announced its dot-brand bid almost two years ago.
Many registry operators are already predicting as many as 1,000 dot-brand applicants.
I’m not ready to predict a slew of similar announcements just yet, but a confirmed dot-brand bidder will certainly do no harm to registries currently trying to persuade clients to sign on the dotted line.

Comment Tagged: ari registry services, dot-brand, ICANN, melbourne it, new gTLDs, starhub

Cybersquatters face jail time in the Philippines

Cybersquatting is about to be criminalized in the Philippines, and you’re not going to believe the penalties.
Squatters could face six to 12 years in jail if found guilty under Senate Bill 2796, which has reportedly just been approved by the country’s Senate.
Six years is the minimum term, but the bill does allow for an alternative punishment of a 500,000 peso fine, which works out to about $12,000.
That’s 300,000 pesos more than the fine for hacking, newly criminalized by the same bill, which also carries a six-to-12-year prison sentence.
Here’s the definition of “cyber-squatting” from the bill, courtesy of BlogWatch.tv:

The acquisition of a domain name over the internet in bad faith to profit, mislead, destroy reputation, and deprive others from registering the same, if such a domain name is:
i. Similar, identical, or confusingly similar to an existing trademark registered with the appropriate government agency at the time of the domain name registration
ii. Identical or in any way similar with the name of a person other than the registrant, in case of a personal name; and
iii. Acquired without right or with intellectual property interests in it

The bill also provides prison sentences for what the local media is calling “cyber sex”, but which appears to cover internet pornography in general.
A companion bill in the House has to be approved before the law hits the statute books.

Comment Tagged: cybersquatting, philippines

ICANN advertises new gTLDs on Twitter

ICANN has really ramped up the social marketing of its new generic top-level domain program for the last few weeks, and today it started plugging new gTLDs with some Twitter advertising.
It’s bought some “Promoted Tweets”, which means some Twitter users will see a designated ICANN tweet even if they don’t already follow ICANN.
Here’s an example captured by @andrewhennigan.

The Promoted Tweets ad service is bid-based and priced on a cost-per-engagement basis, so advertisers only pay when they get a reply, retweet, follow, etc. Reportedly, there’s a $15,000 minimum commitment.
Judging by Twitter noise today, I’m guessing that today ICANN is promoting its new gTLDs Twitter chat, which is happening at 1600 UTC tomorrow with the hashtag #newgtlds.

Comment Tagged: ICANN, new gTLDs, twitter

ARI signs up 21 new gTLD clients

ARI Registry Services says it signed up 21 new generic top-level domain clients in the first week after ICANN opened the program earlier this month.
The majority were dot-brand applicants, ARI said in a press release today. It has found that dot-brands represent about 60% of all the companies expressing interest in a new gTLD.
They all signed contracts between January 12, when ICANN starting taking applications, and January 19, the registry services provider said.
A spokesperson said that ARI expects to name some of its clients “in a matter of weeks”, but it’s not clear whether this will happen before March 29 – the deadline for making your first down-payment with ICANN – when it would be of most marketing use.
In the absence of this specific positive reinforcement of its message, the company today tried some FUD instead.
CEO Adrian Kinderis is quoted:

We have clients that are still undecided about whether they should apply. They have been put off by the negativity that has been surrounding the program. There have been delays and speculation. There is also a misguided perception amongst some that they can wait until the next round to secure their brand or generic category name. My message to those clients is that there is no certainty about when there will be another round. Potential applicants need to understand that if they take a ‘wait and see’ approach, they may miss out all together.

I’m not keen on this kind of fear-based marketing, but Kinderis has a point: the timing of the second-round is currently uncertain. Based on current evidence, I think an optimistic view is 2015.
I cover the subject in some depth on DomainIncite PRO (which you simply must subscribe to, otherwise your house will burn down with all of your cats inside… oh, look, I’m doing it now.)

Comment Tagged: ari registry services, dot-brands, ICANN, new gTLDs

Five amusing Twitter accounts to follow

One of the good things about Twitter is that there’s no Whois (yet), which makes it fertile ground for pseudonymous humor.
Here are the five bogus domain humor tweeters I find amusing.
No, before you ask, none of these are me. I’ve only written one thing under a fake identity since I launched DI.
@BobRecstrum
Bob tweets in-character as a “heightened” version of ICANN CEO Rod Beckstrom.
He’s basically a globe-trotting narcissist hippy with delusions of grandeur and an obsessive penchant for taking panoramic iPhone photos of himself shaking hands with world leaders.
His avatar, inexplicably, is Sam Rockwell as Zaphod Beeblebrox.

@thereforeICANN
This account, which usually offers a satirical view of ICANN proceedings, typically peaks during its thrice-yearly public meetings.
Whoever is responsible for this account has clearly been around ICANN for a while – s/he goes to the meetings, reads the web site, and knows what’s coming before it happens.

@dns_borat
This one’s for the geeks. Imagine everyone’s favorite Kazakhstani roving reporter, but he’s a DNS administrator.
That’s pretty much it really.

@DotSucks
This account was only created in the last few days. I’d hazard a guess that it has links to the adult entertainment industry, due to the obvious anti-.xxx sentiment on display.
The premise, of course, is that new gTLDs are basically a massive shakedown. Shows promise.

(I’ll note that the first time I heard of .sucks back in 2000 when it was floated by then-chair of ICANN Esther Dyson, ironically now one of the new gTLD program’s highest-profile critics.)
@domainhumor
This one is slightly different for two reasons: 1) I know who it is. 2) He/she has not tweeted much funny stuff lately.
I follow it in the hope that this might change one day.

Comment Tagged: ICANN, twitter

Verisign to apply for a dozen new gTLDs

Verisign plans to apply to ICANN for about 12 new generic top-level domains, according to the executive in charge of registry services.
“We intend to do about 12. Most of those will be transliterations of .com,” senior vice president Pat Kane said on the company’s fourth-quarter earnings call yesterday.
This does not mark a significant change of strategy – the company has been open about its intention to apply for internationalized domain name variants of .com for over a year – but I believe it’s the first time it’s put a number on it.
It will be interesting to see which gTLDs – if any – Verisign will go for which are not .com IDNs.
My view is that it would make more sense for the company to apply for potentially high-volume .com competitors, such as .web or .blog. It has the capacity, the channel and the cash.
Smaller niche gTLDs may not be worth the distraction and risk, and would be better suited to dedicated registries that can concentrate on more focused marketing.
In any event, we’re going to see some major consolidation in the new gTLD space four or five years from now, and Verisign could well vacuum up cash-making registries at that time.
CEO Jim Bidzos also said on the call that Verisign has been retained to provide the registry for “several” dot-brand applications, but that it will not see any material revenue until 2013.
The major event for 2012, he noted, is the renewal of the .com Registry Agreement with ICANN, which expires at the end of November.
Verisign is already “engaging” with ICANN on this, Bidzos said.
This contract will be posted for public comment and sent to the US Department of Commerce for approval.
I’m expecting controversy, particularly if the contract continues to allow Verisign to increase prices.
It’s going to be harder for Verisign to argue that it needs the extra cash to invest in its infrastructure if it’s also leveraging that infrastructure to win lucrative dot-brand contracts.

3 Comments Tagged: .com, dot-brand, ICANN, idns, new gTLDs, verisign

Manwin files its first cybersquatting complaint

Manwin Licensing, the company currently suing ICANN and ICM Registry claiming .xxx breaks US competition law, has filed its first cybersquatting complaint using the UDRP.
It’s over a .com domain, pornhubarchive.com (don’t go there, not only is it NSFW but it also looks like it panders to some very dubious tastes), which Manwin thinks infringes on its rights to the PornHub name
The domain is registered to a Russian, while pornhub.com itself is protected by Whois privacy.
There’s a certain irony here. PornHub is a “tube” site that allows users to upload content and has itself come under fire for violating intellectual property rights in the past.
It was sued by the the porn production company Pink Visual for copyright infringement in 2010.

Comment Tagged: cybersquatting, manwin, pornhub, pornhubarchive.com, udrp

ICANN tells Congressmen to chillax

ICANN senior vice president Kurt Pritz has replied in writing to great big list of questions posed by US Congressmen following the two hearings into new gTLDs last month.
The answers do what the format of the Congressional hearings made impossible – provide a detailed explanation, with links, of why ICANN is doing what it’s doing.
The 27-page letter (pdf), which addresses questions posed by Reps. Waxman, Eshoo and Dingell, goes over some ground you may find very familiar, if you’ve been paying attention.
These are some of the questions and answers I found particularly interesting.
Why are you doing this?
Pritz gives an overview of the convoluted ICANN process responsible for conceiving, creating and honing the new gTLD program over the last few years.
It explains, for example, that the original GNSO Council vote, which set the wheels in motion back in late 2007, was 19-1 in favor of introducing new gTLDs.
The “lone dissenting vote”, Pritz notes, was cast by a Non-Commercial Users Constituency member – it was Robin Gross of IP Justice – who felt the program had too many restrictions.
The letter does not mention that three Council members – one from the Intellectual Property Constituency and two more from the NCUC – abstained from the vote.
Why aren’t the trademark protection mechanisms finished yet?
The main concern here is the Trademark Clearinghouse.
New gTLD applicants will not find out how the Clearinghouse will operate until March at the earliest, which is cutting it fine considering the deadline for registering as an applicant is March 29.
Pritz, however, tells the Congressmen that applicants have known all they need to know about the Clearinghouse since ICANN approved the program’s launch last June.
The Clearinghouse is a detail that ideally should have been sorted out before the program launched, but I don’t believe it’s the foremost concern for most applicants or trademark owners.
The unresolved detail nobody seems to be asking about is the cost of a Uniform Rapid Suspension complaint, the mechanism to quickly take down infringing second-level domain names.
ICANN has said that it expects the price of URS – which involves paying an intellectual property lawyer to preside over the case – to be $300 to $500, but I don’t know anyone who believes that this will be possible.
Indeed, one of the questions asked by Rep. Waxman starts with the premise “Leading providers under Uniform Dispute Resolution Policy (UDRP) have complained that current fees collected are inadequate to cover the costs of retaining qualified trademark attorneys.”
UDRP fees usually start at around $1,000, double what ICANN expects the URS – which I don’t think is going to be a heck of a lot simpler for arbitration panels to process – to cost trademark owners.
Why isn’t the Trademark Claims service permanent?
The Trademark Claims service is a mandatory trademark protection mechanism. One of its functions is to alert trademark holders when somebody tries to register their mark in a new gTLD.
It’s only mandatory for the first 60 days following the launch of a new gTLD, but I’m in agreement with the IP community here – in an ideal world, it would be permanent.
However, commercial services already exist that do pretty much the same thing, and ICANN doesn’t want to anoint a monopoly provider to start competing with its stakeholders. As Pritz put it:

“IP Watch” services are already provided by private firms, and it was not necessary for the rights protection mechanisms specific to the New gTLD Program to compete with those ongoing watch services already available.

In other words, brands are going to have to carry on paying if they want the ongoing benefits of an infringement notification service in new gTLDs.
When’s the second round?
Nothing new here. Pritz explains why the date for the second round has not been named yet.
Essentially, it’s a combination of not knowing how big the first round is going to be and not knowing how long it will take to conduct the two (or three) post-first-round reviews that ICANN has promised to the Governmental Advisory Committee.
I tackle the issue of second-round timing in considerable detail on DomainIncite PRO. My feeling is 2015.
On Whois verification
Pritz reiterates what ICANN CEO Rod Beckstrom told the Department of Commerce last week: ICANN expects that many registrars will start to verify their customers’ Whois data this year.
ICANN is currently talking to registrars about a new Registrar Accreditation Agreement that would mandate some unspecified degree of Whois verification.
This issue is at the top of the law enforcement wish list, and it was taken up with gusto by the Governmental Advisory Committee at the Dakar meeting in October.
Pritz wrote:

ICANN is currently in negotiations with its accredited registrars over amendments to the Registrar Accreditation Agreement. ICANN is negotiating amendments regarding to the verification of Whois data, and expects its accredited registrars to take action to meet the rising call for verification of data. ICANN expects that the RAA will incorporate – for the first time – Registrar commitments to verify Whois data.

He said ICANN expects to post the amendments for comment before the Costa Rica meeting in mid-March, and the measures would be in place before the first new gTLDs launch in 2013.
I’ve heard from a few registrars with knowledge of these talks that Whois verification mandates may be far from a dead-cert in the new RAA.
But by publicly stating to government, twice now, that Whois verification is expected, the registrars are under increased pressure to make it happen.
IF Whois verification is not among the RAA amendments, expect the registrars to get another dressing down from the GAC at the Costa Rica meeting this March.
On the other hand, ICANN has arguably handed them some negotiating leverage when it comes to extracting concessions, such as reduced fees.
The registrars were prodded into these talks with the GAC stick, the big question now is what kind of carrots they will be offered to adopt an RAA that will certainly raise their costs.
ICANN expects to post the proposed RAA changes for public comment by February 20.

3 Comments Tagged: congress, ICANN, new glds, raa, trademark claims, trademark clearinghouse, uniform rapid suspension, urs, whois