Nominet to release ultra-short .uk domains this year

Nominet, the .uk registry, today outlined its plan to start releasing one and two-character .co.uk domains before the end of 2010.
The launch plan comprises two sunrise periods and a landrush. Contested applications in all three phases will be settled by an auction, with profits going to the Nominet Trust.
The first sunrise is for holders of UK-enforceable trademarks, when the mark was registered and in use in the UK before January 1, 2008. The second will allow holders of unregistered rights to participate.
The landrush will be open to all. Applications will be handled by approved .uk registrars.
Nominet said it plans to publish the launch timeline in more detail on November 1, but that the first sunrise will open before the end of the year.
The list of names to be released is published here (pdf). It includes all 10 digits and all 26 letters of the alphabet under .co.uk, .net.uk, .org.uk and .me.uk, with the exception of u.net.uk, which is already registered.
The vast majority of two-character combinations will also be released under all four of these 2LDs, with the exception of a handful of old registrations such as bt.co.uk and existing 3LD namespaces such as ac.net.uk.
Domains matching existing two-letter country-code TLDs do not appear to be exempt.

Muslim.co auction won by a Christian ministry?

Whois data for the domain muslim.co, which recently sold for $2,650 during the .co landrush auction, suggests it was won by a US-based Christian ministry.
The organization listed as the registrant and administrative contact is Theandric Ministry, the address a postbox at a strip-mall in Reno, Nevada.
While Google sheds no light on this purported organization, the term “theandric” refers to the notion that Christ was both god and man, not a theory you’d expect the typical Muslim to promote.
The domain is currently pointing to Go Daddy’s default parking page. I’ll be interested to see what content, if any, it eventually contains. The equivalent .com domain is also parked.
(UPDATE: the registrant tells me he’s not a ministry and that the Whois data is out of date. He plans to resell or develop the domain.)
The alternate English spelling, moslem.co, appears to have been registered on the first day of .co general availability by a Canadian with a Muslim-sounding name.
Islam.co is on .CO Internet’s reserved list, with the Whois suggesting it is considered a “premium” domain to be auctioned at a later date. Christian.co is also on this list.
That’s not the case for catholic.co and christianity.co, however. Those domains sold for $3,700 and $725 respectively during the landrush auctions.
Hindu.co, hinduism.co, buddhist.co and buddhism.co all appear to have been registered on or around July 20, the first day of general availability.
The three main English spellings of the name of the prophet Mohammed are registered to Dubai or Saudi-based individuals.
Jesus.co is on the premium list. Christ.co appears to have been won at auction last week, but the registry has not yet disclosed the sale price.

.CO landrush auctions top $1 million

According to my calculations, the total value of announced .co landrush auction sales has now topped $1 million, helped in part by the recent sale of Aspen.co for $22,500.
I’m currently aware of over 250 reported sales from the official registry auction, which is only about 10% of the total number of contested landrush applications.
These domains fetched a total of $1,125,932. The average sales price is over $4,400.
Here’s a list of the 30-odd most recently reported sales.

aspen.co – $22,500
myhealth.co – $18,500
allergy.co – $16,286
jackpot.co – $12,500
locksmith.co – $10,000
zoom.co – $10,000
breckenridge.co – $8,499
mall.co – $8,350
see.co – $8,300
pens.co – $8,200
fairfield.co – $7,210
groceries.co – $6,600
assessment.co – $6,437
backup.co – $6,310
llc.co – $5,200
mylawyer.co – $5,100
apparel.co – $4,782
america.co – $4,050
continental.co – $3,972
mark.co – $3,900
cheapinsurance.co – $3,600
steamboat.co – $3,600
motivate.co – $3,500
rooms.co – $3,175
jewellery.co – $3,162
honey.co – $3,150
handbag.co – $3,100
cooks.co – $3,090
cola.co – $2,900
travels.co – $2,830
neem.co – $2,800
rafting.co – $2,600

.CO Internet does not disclose the sales of domains with “adult” themes, but its possible to infer from Whois data some of the domains that it probably auctioned.

.SO launch date is November 1

.SO Registry, the manager of Somalia’s .so country-code top-level domain, has named November 1 as the opening date for sunrise registrations.
The launch plan has been published here. Until the weekend, the organization has just said that it would open in autumn.
The ccTLD is to be unrestricted, along the same lines as .co, but the launch schedule is a little different to the one offered by .CO Internet, with no phases running in parallel.
Trademark holders can file sunrise applications, which will cost a minimum of $90 for a three-year registration, for the month of November. Domains with multiple applications will be auctioned in the first half of December.
Landrush applications will run from December 16 to February 9 at $10 per year. Contested domains will be auctioned February 10 to 28. General availability is slated for March 1, 2011, also with a registry fee of $10.
Other than that, there’s scant information currently available on the .SO Registry web site. Notably, there’s currently nothing about UDRP or other dispute resolution procedures.
The ccTLD has been delegated to Somalia’s Ministry of Post and Telecommunications since April 2009, but the registry is reportedly being handled by GMO Registry, the Japanese company already tapped to handle Canon’s .canon and its own .shop application.

.CO landrush auctions could top $10 million

The ongoing .co landrush auctions could finish up raising more than $10 million for .CO Internet, according to some quick back-of-the-envelope calculations.
My spreadsheet of reported landrush auction sales currently has 194 rows, based on registry reports and the odd unreported sale that Mike Berkens has been able to dig up.
These sales total $869,599, for an average of $4,482 per domain. Multiply that average by 2,523, which is the number of domains that were originally headed to auction, and you get to $11.3 million.
That may well be an unreliable estimate, of course, for any number of reasons.
For instance, .CO Internet is not reporting sales of porn-themed domains, or domains that may have UDRP issues. These domains could possibly have lower average sales prices.
The registry may also not be reporting other results, such as auctions that wound up with only one bidder for whatever reason, which could also drag down the average.
However, it seems that so far UDRP-risky domains or typos of popular generic domains (such as some of the typos of numerical .coms popular in Asia) have been among the big hitters.
AutoGlass.co, for example, appears to have slipped under the registry’s radar, and has been reported sold for $53,000. AutoGlass is a well-known brand here in the UK. I’ll be interested in seeing who bought it.
If these big prices hold true for other unreported sales of domains with possible trademark issues it could actually raise the average sales price.
Either way, it’s clearly been a successful auction so far.

.CO landrush auctions raise over $50k so far

The ongoing .co landrush auctions have fetched well over $50,000 in sales so far, according to stats released by the registry, .CO Internet, today.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, the biggest price tag among the 24 closed auctions is attached to a typo – 163.co went for $5,778. The .com equivalent is a Chinese portal with hundreds of millions of visitors.
The registry has not released any figures for adult-oriented domains, or any domains that look like they might have UDRP issues (why are these being sold?), so the list is far from complete.

163.co – $5,778
cityjobs.co – $4,600
dedicated.co – $3,600
airporttransfers.co – $3,200
christchurch.co – $3,100
boaterexam.co – $2,550
economist.co – $2,550
center.co – $2,150
globo.co – $2,050
exchangerates.co – $2,050
bonus.co – $2,000
customer.co – $1,550
abel.co – $1,470
communicate.co – $1,350
addiction.co – $1,300
elevator.co – $1,251
acid.co – $1,250
herbal.co – $1,201
duo.co – $1,161
cycles.co – $1,150
desi.co – $1,060
developers.co – $1,001
baker.co – $1,000
ace.co – $1,000

I’m told that the many of the “hotter” auctions are still open. Rules state that any new bid extends the auction by 24 hours. This could go on for a while yet.

VeriSign plans single-letter .com auctions

VeriSign has confirmed that it wants to auction off single-character .com domain names, following a test with the equivalent .net domains.
The company recently asked ICANN for permission to sell one and two-letter .net domains. As Andrew Allemann noted at the time, that was a pretty strong indicator it would want to do the same with .com.
Now the company has admitted as much, and is looking for an online auction provider to handle the sales. It published a Request For Proposals today. The RFP says:

VeriSign intends to submit a proposal to ICANN through the RSEP [Registry Services Evaluation Process] and anticipates allocating .com single and two character domain name registrations through an auction as well

One and two-letter domains are currently restricted, due to the potential confusion with country-code TLDs. ICANN has been gradually lifting that restriction in some of the less-popular TLDs.
If VeriSign is also given permission, which seems likely, the auctions would certainly be lucrative.
If o.co can fetch $350,000, how much would Overstock, which has been screaming out for o.com for years, stump up for the .com equivalent? I also recall, years ago, Yahoo saying it wanted y.com.
But VeriSign might not be the main beneficiary of the proceeds. In its .net application, it says that it would use any money raised with the .com auctions for the common good.

VeriSign is not hereby proposing a release of .com single and/or two character domain names. VeriSign anticipates that any such proposal will be structured differently than the proposal for .net and will include use of proceeds from any auction for the benefit of the general Internet community.

That’s open to interpretation, of course. Investing a few million dollars in upgrading its infrastructure could be said to benefit the general internet community.

.CO landrush auctions kick off today

.CO Internet has today started auctioning off domain names that had multiple applicants during the .co landrush earlier this summer.
According to the company, over 2,500 names will be auctioned over the next four weeks. The top three most-contested names were Slots.co, Insure.co and Denver.co.

Other notable .CO domain names up for auction include Mexi.co, America.co, Betting.co, Vitamins.co, UsedCars.co, Happy.co, Ebook.co and Jackpot.co.

Registrants who applied for one of the contested domains need to sign up at www.COauctions.co.
There have been almost 410,000 .co registrations since the Colombian country-code domain was opened up to international registrants last month.
So far, the biggest seller has been o.co, sold to Overstock for $350,000.
Given that slots.com sold for $5.5 million, it seems likely that slots.co could fetch something in five figures or beyond.